Apple is the latest tech giant to strike a deal with Shutterstock
Apple has reportedly negotiated a licensing deal with Shutterstock to access millions of images for AI model training. The agreement follows Apple's previous efforts to negotiate with news organizations, including Condé Nast and NBC News.
Apple is the latest tech company to announce a deal with Shutterstock to license content from its media libraries for AI model training. The details of the negotiation are not public, however, Shutterstock CFO Jarrod Yahes corroborated to Reuters that deals with tech giants like Apple, Meta, and OpenAI typically range from $25 to $50 million, and are often later expanded, as recently happened when Shutterstock and OpenAI announced the expansion of their strategic partnership through a six-year contract signed in July 2023. The agreement granted OpenAI access to additional training data from Shutterstock's media libraries and their associated metadata. Conversely, Shutterstock gained access to OpenAI's technology, including priority access to DALL·E.
The Shutterstock agreement is far from Apple's first foray into content licensing for AI model training. Last December, the New York Times reported that Apple was negotiating licensing deals with several news organizations, including Condé Nast (Vogue, The New Yorker), NBC News, and IAC (People, Better Homes and Gardens). Regardless, the company is often portrayed as playing an eternal game of catch-up with its competitors. Unlike comparable companies, Apple has been trying to uphold its commitment to privacy while negotiating access to the necessary data to remain competitive in the AI race. After all, even the Shutterstock deal is happening against a backdrop in which several other tech giants are facing copyright lawsuits accusing them of unlawfully scraping several types of data from the internet without notification or compensation to the creators.
