# Is Stock Photography Dead? What's Happening With AI and Stock Photos in 2026 ## [00:00:00] Intro [00:00:00] **Tiana Ned:** Okay, so this last Saturday was supposed to be just a catch-up, chill vibes day for me where I work on my own projects and I had, I think about 10 to 15 tabs open, and one of them was Ticketmaster because I remembered that I need to get tickets to go and see Godsmack next week. [00:00:26] I'm so, so, so excited. I cannot wait to see them live and rock my brains out [00:00:32] And one of the tabs was also my own website 'cause I've been messing with my blog layout for, I don't know, probably like last two months and nothing ever gets done fully. And I also thought, "Okay, this is a good time to generate some, um,AI imagery for my feature images on the blog." [00:00:55] And as I was bouncing back and forth between getting tickets, then getting back to my, website's backend, then generating images in ChatGPT, And I probably, I think,generated like 30 to 40 images at this point, just banging them out in the last hour. and one of them was so good, so crisp. You could see the textures. lightning was impeccable. It looked exactly as I wanted it. And then I remembered, "Okay, a few years back, I would have probably gotten this from a stock subscription, and I probably would have paid, like, 12 bucks for just this image." [00:01:38] And as I'm sitting there listening to Godsmack in the background, I was just thinking, "Huh, this is interesting. What is going on currently with stock photographers and stock photography in general?" So as usual, that sent me down a rabbit hole [00:01:59] And I started digging and doing some research about the latest happenings regarding stock photography as an industry right now. Because there's been this narrative going around online that it's basically dead, [00:02:13] uh, 98% collapse numbers, something like that. And then I went looking for where that number really came from, and it got weird, and we're gonna get into that. Oh, and also, this is not just about photographers. There's a whole other side of this that involves human models, and honestly, [00:02:35] That part piqued my curiosity as well and what's going on on that front [00:02:41] ## [00:02:41] Welcome [00:02:58] **Tiana Ned:** Hey, welcome to AI For Creative Professionals. I'm Tijana, and if you're new here, this is the show for designers, writers, marketers, videographers, photographers, illustrators, and basically anyone creative who is trying to figure out what AI changes about how you work without all the hype and without the doom. [00:03:23] So today is gonna be one of those I went and checked the numbers kind of episodes, cause I did the checking so that you don't have to sit up at midnight doing it yourself, unlike me [00:03:34] [00:03:35] **Tiana Ned:** Okay, so here's where the rabbit hole started getting interesting because right around the time I was making all these images, there was some news in the space. ## [00:03:45] Getty & Shutterstock Merger [00:03:45] **Tiana Ned:** Getty Images and Shutterstock, the two biggest names in stock photography, had this merger that was announced back in January of 2025. [00:03:55] Something like $3.7 billion. Basically,basically, the two giants combining into one company, and then it just fell apart, it seems like, this July. Uh, so the UK's competition regulator, the CMA, blocked it. Although, and this part is what really surprised me, not over the stock photo side of the business at all. [00:04:19] They blocked it specifically over editorial photography. So the news images, sports, the red carpet stuff, paparazzi photos. And they said combining those two companies would basically give one company too much control over how UK media outlets get their news imagery. And Getty's board looked at the terms they've had to accept. [00:04:43] Basically, selling off Shutterstock's whole editorial arm And just said no, and they walked away [00:04:50] . And there seems like there's a $40 million breakup fee involved, which, ouch. But here's what actually got me, because the CMA cleared the stock photography side. The, you know, the creative generic stock content side, no problem there. And the reasoning was basically that market is not concentrated anymore because AI generators are already competing with it, which is such a strange thing when you think about it, right? [00:05:21] Regulators are looking at two of the biggest photo companies on Earth and going, "Eh, plenty of competition thanks to Midjourney and DALL-E and Firefly." [00:05:31] And then days before Getty walked away from the deal, they announced a whole different move, which is a licensing partnership with OpenAI. Getty's photo library is showing up inside ChatGPT search results with attribution, Getty g-getting paid for it, and Getty's stock price jumped something like ninety percent in one day off that announcement, like for a licensing deal. [00:05:57] J-just that part, so not really selling any more photos. So I don't know. The story isn't AI destroyed stock photography. At least for right now, is the giant companies are racing to become AI suppliers instead of staying in the business of selling you a photo of a woman laughing alone with a salad or whatever. [00:06:18] And whether that's good news or terrible news kind of depends on who you ask, and more specifically, whether you're the company or the actual photographer whose work is in that library. Which brought me to ## [00:06:32] Fact-Checking the 98% Collapse Stat [00:06:38] **Tiana Ned:** the number that's been floating around the internet about this, because I'd seen it before I even started digging, the 98% collapse thing, and I wanted to know whether that was real [00:06:43] Okay, so when I first saw that stat, stock photographer earnings dropped from $1.47 billion in 2019 to 31 million in 2026, I was like, damn, this is such a huge difference in numbers. it's so dramatic and shareable, right? But I don't know, something felt off, so I went looking for the source, and I couldn't find one. [00:07:12] I couldn't find where that number originally came from, and it traces back to a blog post, from an SEO content site, and it presents a bunch of these huge numbers with basically zero sourcing. [00:07:26] $14 billion market in 2019 down to 3.2 billion now. Getty bankruptcy, quote unquote. but none of it checks out against actual reporting. And that same site elsewhere literally described how they engineer posts like that one to go viral. So yeah, so what, like what? [00:07:49] It seems that it was made up or at least it's unverifiable to the point where, you know, I'm not gonna put it as a fact. So what the market research firms say, and look, these are firms that sell reports, so a bit of grain of salt here too. But it's that the stock photography market is somewhere around $5 to $7 billion, and it's still growing 4 to 7% a year, depending on which firm you ask. [00:08:18] So it's not collapsing or thriving either in an old school way, right? So it, it's still there and it's bigger than that, fake number would lead you to believe [00:08:28] What is real and kind of sad if you think about the individual person behind it, uh, per download royalties for contributors have dropped dramatically. One analysis I found had Shutterstock contributors averaging around seventy-eight cents a download in twenty twenty five. that's down from over a dollar a few years back. [00:08:54] And one working contributor tracked their own numbers going from something like a dollar a download down to thirty cents after Shutterstock reset their commission tiers. So it seems like individual photographers or the humans uploading their real photos are getting squeezed pretty hard. Fifteen, twenty, forty percent income drop for a lot of them So there's that. [00:09:20] And ## [00:09:20] Where the Value Actually Went [00:09:22] **Tiana Ned:** here's what I think is going on, once you separate the fake number from the real trend. It's not that stock photography died, it's really just that the value moved. It moved away from here's a generic photo of a diverse team high-fiving, in an office, 'cause AI can make that in 10 seconds, and it looks just as fine [00:09:44] So it moved away from that towards two places. One, which is editorial and news content, so those are, real-time events that are happening, which is exactly the piece the UK regulator was protecting. And then two, it moved towards the platforms themselves, who are pivoting into basically becoming data suppliers for AI companies. [00:10:08] Shutterstock's AI licensing arm alone was already worth over $100 million in 2023, and they're projecting it toward 250 million by 2027. So, but th- that's not the photographers making that money, that's the company [00:10:27] Okay, so ## [00:10:28] AI Models & Fashion Industry [00:10:28] **Tiana Ned:** this is the part of the rabbit hole I didn't expect to end up in, but it's not just photographers, it's the models too [00:10:36] So Zalando, if you're not familiar with it, it's a big European fashion retailer, said something like 70% of their fourth quarter editorial campaign images were AI enhanced. Their own people said it cut production time from six to eight weeks down to three or four days, and costs down 90%. H&M did this thing with digital twins of 30 of their actual models. [00:11:06] So the models get scanned basically, and then H&M can generate new images of them without booking another shoot to H&M's credit, they say the models are paid per use and keep some rights over it. Mango also did a whole AI-generated model for a teen line. Uh, Guess ran an AI model in an actual Vogue ad and got some backlash over it [00:11:33] And the person I found whose reaction, stuck with me was Sarah Ziff. She runs the Model Alliance, [00:11:40] And her point was not so much about the tech part of it, but about consent and about who's actually protected when a company generates a, quote-unquote, "diverse cast of AI models instead of hiring real models of color." cause that's, I mean, it's kind of uncomfortable thing to think about because companies [00:12:02] Can now get the appearance of representation without paying a person from that background to be in the room. ## [00:12:09] What This Means for Creative Freelancers [00:12:09] **Tiana Ned:** what do you do with all of this if you are a creative freelancer listening to this and thinking, "Okay, cool. Thanks for this info, but what is the actual takeaway?" Here's the thing I keep coming back to, and I think I mentioned this in some of the last year's episodes. [00:12:26] The stuff that got wiped out first in stock photography was the most generic, most replaceable stuff. Okay? So, the images of the businessman pointing to a pie chart thing. And what's holding value is stuff that's tied to something real. So it's... Whether it's a real event or a real specific hard-to-fake human moment And rights that are cleared and documented so a brand can use it without any legal risk. [00:12:57] And I think that maps onto basically every creative discipline, right? Not just photography. If what you make is easily described in a sentence and easily generated by a prompt, that part of your work is at risk. Not necessarily gone, but definitely cheaper right now. And what's not easily replicated is specificity, relationships, expertise, and this is the one that people often forget, legal and reputational protection. [00:13:27] You know, because someone's gotta stand behind the work and say, " This is real. This is cleared. You can use it." So that's worth something, and AI cannot sign that. And if you are a photographer or a model yourself listening to this, go read your contracts right now for anything about AI training rights or digital replica clauses. [00:13:49] New York actually passed a law this year requiring companies to get separate specific consent before making an AI version of a model. What it's for, how long, how much they're paid, all of that. So that's the new baseline. And if a contract doesn't have that, well, that's a flag [00:14:08] ## [00:14:09] Wrap-Up [00:14:09] **Tiana Ned:** So back to last Saturday, uh, Godsmack tickets secured. Yay. And my website still not fully done, obviously. It never is. But I did end up using those generated images, for my blog posts, and it's fine. It works [00:14:28] Because for this use case, and specifically 'cause I talk about AI, it's pretty useful. But I keep thinking about the pause, that little half second where I realize somewhere a person used to get paid for delivering exactly this. And it wasn't a huge amount usually, right? [00:14:47] A contributor payout, a s- stock photo license, maybe 78 cents, you know, per download. [00:14:54] But I think it's worth knowing what's true and what's made up for clicks about what's happening, in stock photography or in any other industry for that matter Because obviously when you, see a headline that says, "AI destroyed an entire industry overnight," or, "AI killed this, AI killed that." that's what people are doing for clicks, . And What's the less satisfying truth is that [00:15:21] A market redistributed unevenly, and individual contributors got squeezed while platforms found a new business model. So [00:15:30] That's what's really going on [00:15:33] I'd love to know from you if you've ever used a stock photo and an AI-generated one or hired photographer for client work. Has any of this changed how you think about which one you reach for? Let me know [00:15:49] There are links to my socials in, show notes, so shoot me a message [00:15:54] All right, that's it for this one. Uh, thank you so much for listening to another episode of AI for Creative Professionals. I will talk to you next week.