AI x The End of The Stock Photographer

8 photos. Only 4 are real. Can you spot the fakes?

Below are a total of 8 photos of women working on their laptops. 4 are stock photos. I made the other 4 myself using Midjourney. Can you spot the fakes? (The answer is revealed at the end of the article.)

While the stock photography industry is relatively small to the overall photographic services market ($36 billion), it does employ a long tail of studios and amateur photographers that have built niche businesses selling professional images with universal appeal to the tune of an approximate $4 billion this year.

But it’s been a bumpy ride. In particular over the last two decades… and the stock photography industry might be at a point in time where they’ll have a Encyclopaedia Britannica moment.

Strike one – The internet

The history of stock photography dates back to the 1920s– and would hit its peak in the 80s and 90s as photo agencies and studios began to offer their pre-shot professional photos to brands, agencies, and advertisers. You’d browse images in a mail-order catalog, and the agencies used CD-ROMs to deliver their content (e.g. PhotoDisc).

But then came the world wide web, and companies like Shutterstock (2003) and istockphoto (2000) turned the once-lucrative business model on its head by offering instant access to thousands of royalty-free images for a monthly subscription (“Unlimited Access For as Little as $49.99!”).

Suddenly, anyone with a camera could compete with professional photo agencies, and clients could have the content delivered in real-time at near-zero cost. It was faster (downloads), cheaper (subscription-based with zero distribution cost), and… better (more choice) and would, as such, inevitably go on to to re-write the economy of stock photography forever.

Strike two – Unsplash

Unsplash made its debut in 2013 with an incredible value proposition: Curated high-quality royalty-free stock photos from passionate and talented amateur and professional photographers from across the globe.

It was stock photography that didn’t feel like… stock photography.

And just like that, the multi-billion dollar stock photo industry would - once again - find itself disrupted by something that was even cheaper (now free) even better (curated), and even faster (Integrations with platforms like Medium, Squarespace, Substack that let users bypass the needs to visit a website or download a photo…. the Unsplash API now answers more than 3.8 billion photo requests per month.) 10 years down the road Unsplash now features some 3 million photos from some 300,000 photographers from across the globe. The website was – inevitably – acquired by industry leader Getty Images for an undisclosed sum in 2021 (but rumored to be around $100 million.)

Now why would someone give their photography away for free? Goodwill, community, and exposure, I guess. Hobbyists do it for the joy of the soul, not the money. 

Strike three – Generative AI

“The primary skills of a stock photographer have ‘nothing to do with art. You have to be a workaholic’” reads an article from Financial Times (paywall). They’re right. But there’s more to the story.

The same article is titled ‘Inside the lucrative world of stock photography’ but doesn’t quite answer who it’ll be lucrative for. Yes… the stock photography industry is projected to grow at a tune of 5% a year, and sure… 3 of 4 images are sold for commercial purposes such as marketing, advertising and social media, but…

… will the actual creators, the photographers, live to see any of the $4 billion in annual sales? Probably… not. Here’s why:

On one hand, there’s certainly an increased demand for stock photography, driven by social media, e-commerce and digital advertising. But on the other, the average price per image has declined steadily over the last two decades.

Stock photography is designed for universal appeal. To have the even the slightest chance of making it as a stock photographer in present day you’d need to both outwork, outsmart and outprice the competition. The bar is low, and there’s little to no creativity or art. 

Some 20 years ago, the top sales rankings on stock photography websites had to be taken down so that photographers wouldn’t know which images were making other people money, since stock producers would simply copy an innovative idea or even re-upload the same image under their own name (to paraphrase the article from financial times). But the sales, trends and demand data is still there. It’s just… proprietary.

Meanwhile, in a not-too-distant universe, millions of photos are generated each day across Midjourney and Dall-E… and we find ourselves standing at the dawn of a technological revolution with the rise of AI and generative art.

It’s reasonable to assume that there’ll be more unique AI generated photos over the next 12 month than the entirety of all stock photography that have ever been created and made available for purchase… ever. (an estimated 500 million photos or so.).

And this time around, you won’t be able to outwork, outsmart or outprice the competition. The market will be flooded by generative AI art, and Getty, Shutterstock and iStock will have no other choice than to come along for the ride.

But the same can’t be said for their photographers and contributors. This time, they’ll be left behind. Once again, It’ll be faster (real-time search —> generative art), cheaper (no 15%-40% revenue share to contributors) and better (customized to your exact liking, unlimited versions, etc).

Sure– The quality is still not quite there. Resolution is too low, teeth and hands look funny, etc… but it’s only a matter of time. Look no further than what’s trending on Shutterstock right now. These photos are all “real”, but does it … matter?

So, you need a photo of rustic bread, with flour sprinkled from a white paper bag, and a measuring cup captured from above (top view, flat lay) on black chalkboard background?

I took that exact caption (from the lower middle photo) and ran in Midjourney.

The output?

That’s not bad at all. I’ve got endless variations of that exact photo, at near zero-cost. In seconds. I hold the rights to those photos. It’s better, faster and cheaper.

Could I sell them on Shutterstock? Well… no. And neither can anyone else. But the platforms can, and they will. The very same platforms that have both demand (customers) and decades of proprietary data (what’s trending, popular and so on.).

In the near term, AI and generative art will force a long-tail of stock photographers out of business. They simply won’t be able to outsmart or outwork the technology. Next up, the same technology will force the very platforms out of business, too. So who gets to have the last laugh? The real creatives, and artists, I think.

Encyclopaedia Britannica had a successful 244-year run, but it was ultimately surpassed by Wikipedia. Do people miss the nostalgia of flipping through a traditional encyclopedia? Perhaps. Will we miss stock photography? Don’t think so.

– Aron

p.s. Oh and the 4 fake photos? It’s 3,4,5,8.