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Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Getty Images to File for Bankruptcy, Go Private in Restructuring Deal
www.hollywoodreporter.com: After abandoning a $3.7 billion merger with rival Shutterstock in late June over a regulatory roadblock, Getty Images now plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and go private in partnership with Charles Koch’s investment firm.
While I had never heard about this planned merger between Shutterstock and Getty Images, given that I have absolutely heard of Getty Images by doing any sort of a search for an image before, this was an interesting read. I wished that the article went more in depth about what prevented the merger between this two incredibly large stock photo companies from occurring. It mentions a “regulatory roadblock” but does not go into detail at all about what that roadblock is. The note about the investor presentation mentioning that the advancement of AI photo creation harms the stock photo business definitely jumped out at me. The stock photo industry has never come to mind when I think about businesses that are hurt by AI. While I definitely understand the struggle of trying to find a stock photo of a specific thing and none of them are exactly what I want, it is still unfortunate that people turn to AI photo creation over just using the many many stock photos that exist. Stock photography is in a sense, some sort of art, and it is a shame when people use AI over art.
This is odd to me because my whole life Getty Images has just existed. I had never given much thought to how they operated or made money, they were just there. Though now that the use of AI imagery has become more normalized I am not surprised that way less people use Getty Images. The more I think about it does make sense because you had to pay the licensing fee to Getty images. Even before AI people were finding ways around this by copying images from websites and directly from Google. I am very surprised that any merger with Shutterstock was abandoned as both are struggling against AI. I honestly can’t see a way that Getty thought they could get out of the current hole they are in. Working with Shutterstock would have allowed them to work together versus against each other as AI is beating both of them. It is going to be a little weird on the internet with Getty Images now.
2 comments:
While I had never heard about this planned merger between Shutterstock and Getty Images, given that I have absolutely heard of Getty Images by doing any sort of a search for an image before, this was an interesting read. I wished that the article went more in depth about what prevented the merger between this two incredibly large stock photo companies from occurring. It mentions a “regulatory roadblock” but does not go into detail at all about what that roadblock is. The note about the investor presentation mentioning that the advancement of AI photo creation harms the stock photo business definitely jumped out at me. The stock photo industry has never come to mind when I think about businesses that are hurt by AI. While I definitely understand the struggle of trying to find a stock photo of a specific thing and none of them are exactly what I want, it is still unfortunate that people turn to AI photo creation over just using the many many stock photos that exist. Stock photography is in a sense, some sort of art, and it is a shame when people use AI over art.
This is odd to me because my whole life Getty Images has just existed. I had never given much thought to how they operated or made money, they were just there. Though now that the use of AI imagery has become more normalized I am not surprised that way less people use Getty Images. The more I think about it does make sense because you had to pay the licensing fee to Getty images. Even before AI people were finding ways around this by copying images from websites and directly from Google.
I am very surprised that any merger with Shutterstock was abandoned as both are struggling against AI. I honestly can’t see a way that Getty thought they could get out of the current hole they are in. Working with Shutterstock would have allowed them to work together versus against each other as AI is beating both of them. It is going to be a little weird on the internet with Getty Images now.
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