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By Ivanna Attié

Ivanna Attié Senior Content Manager, Market Analyst, and Lead Author

I am Content Manager, Researcher, and Author in StockPhotoSecrets.com and Stock Photo Press and its many stock media-oriented publications. I am a passionate communicator with a love for visual imagery and an inexhaustible thirst for knowledge. Lucky enough to enter the wonderful world of stock photography working side-by-side with experienced experts, I am happy to share my research, insights, and advice about image licensing, stock photography offers, and the stock media industry with everyone in the creative community. My background is in Communication and Journalism, and I also love literature and performing arts.

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Edited by Christian

Reviewed by Ivanna Attié

Ivanna Attié Senior Content Manager, Market Analyst, and Lead Author

I am Content Manager, Researcher, and Author in StockPhotoSecrets.com and Stock Photo Press and its many stock media-oriented publications. I am a passionate communicator with a love for visual imagery and an inexhaustible thirst for knowledge. Lucky enough to enter the wonderful world of stock photography working side-by-side with experienced experts, I am happy to share my research, insights, and advice about image licensing, stock photography offers, and the stock media industry with everyone in the creative community. My background is in Communication and Journalism, and I also love literature and performing arts.

Learn more

The titan of stock photo licensing, Shutterstock, finally released Shutterstock Generate, their own AI image generator that creates images from text prompts. 

Shutterstock Generate is now available for all users worldwide on the agency’s platform.

Built based on collaboration with leading AI experts OpenAI, this text-to-image generation tool is easy to use, promises great results, and is ethically responsible. 

Learn all about it below!

Try Shutterstock Generate Right Now!

Shutterstock’s native AI generative tool was announced back in October 2022 and is the result of a strategic partnership between the agency and OpenAI, the lab behind popular text-to-image art generator Dall-E. 

Their collaboration focused on bringing the Dall-E generative model onto Shutterstock’s platform but training the AI solely with Shutterstock content. 

As a result, Shutterstock Generate can produce diverse, accurate, and legally backed-up images –the latter being very relevant in today’s context, where big global companies are suing AI generative models for copyright infringement for using content from their catalogs in AI training datasets. 

That is, in essence, what Shutterstock Generate is. The new tool is very easy to use, even more so than others in the space. 

To generate an image using AI at Shutterstock, all you have to do is go to Shutterstock Generate, type a keyword or idea in the search bar, and hit the “Generate” button. The app will then create four images based on your instruction, and you can choose which one(s) you want to license and download. Each AI-generated image equals one download from Shutterstock's subscription plans or image packs. In the case of Flex subscriptions, one AI image equals one credit. Before downloading, you have options to apply style filters such as “Photo,” “Art,” “Digital,” or “3D” to adjust the look of your pictures. Generate is available worldwide and works in all languages supported on Shutterstock's platform.

Bonus: The Shutterstock Image Pack Coupon gives a 25% discount on a 25-image pack so you can download up to 25 AI-generated images at the lowest rates!

What is interesting is that while the better the text prompt is, the better the result you’ll get (and Shutterstock provides a quick guide to writing good prompts), they emphasized users not needing to learn how to write complex text descriptions to summon an image creation; Shutterstock Generate can synthesize images even from one word alone. This is certainly a plus if you don’t feel like learning a whole new writing skill to use an AI tool. 

Equally valuable, as the tool is trained with content from Shutterstock’s library, it is meant to deliver varied, inclusive, diverse, and realistic imagery that reflects the content the agency has curated into its 425 million photo depository. 

Finally, Shutterstock aims to operate like a one-stop shop for creatives. Generate is part of that vision: you can edit your AI-generated picture in Shutterstock Create until you get the perfect result, as well as plug it into the many other applications of Shutterstock Creative Flow –included for free with your Shutterstock subscription– to go from idea to design to execution, all in one place. 

Probably the most innovative point in Shutterstock’s approach to AI tech is their Contributor Fund, a program that pays all artists in Shutterstock’s platform whose work is included in datasets to train Generate a monetary compensation –in the form of a percentage royalty rate– every time their work is used in the creation of synthetic images. 

An ethical way to train AI models and respect artists’ copyright is at the core of most developers’ plans. Still, so far, no other company has established a structure to pay photographers directly. 

When you create an image using Shutterstock Generate, you know any artist whose work helped in your creation is being compensated. 

Shutterstock's commitment to responsible AI tech development is clear. From its partnerships with Meta and LG Research to this Dall-E-based AI image generator, they're working hard and at full speed to stay on top of the game.

We had been eagerly waiting to try Shutterstock Generate and are now excited to see what users make of this tool. What are your thoughts? We’d love to know!

Ivanna Attié

I am Content Manager, Researcher, and Author in StockPhotoSecrets.com and Stock Photo Press and its many stock media-oriented publications. I am a passionate communicator with a love for visual imagery and an inexhaustible thirst for knowledge. Lucky enough to enter the wonderful world of stock photography working side-by-side with experienced experts, I am happy to share my research, insights, and advice about image licensing, stock photography offers, and the stock media industry with everyone in the creative community. My background is in Communication and Journalism, and I also love literature and performing arts.

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