Will AI kill the photostock industry?



Many occupations are

expected to be affected by the development of AI, and major changes have already begun to occur in the working styles and income of game developers and illustrators . Stock Performer, a company that conducts comparative analysis of photo stock services on how generative AI, which has become able to produce images that are indistinguishable from real photos , will affect the industry that handles stock photos. Co-founder Oliver Kudell explained.

Is AI Killing the Stock Industry? A Data Perspective. – Stock Performer
https://www.stockperformer.com/blog/is-ai-killing-the-stock-industry-a-data-perspective/

·table of contents
◆1: Overview of stock industry
◆2: Is the profit of photo stock companies really declining?
◆3: What percentage of people upload AI-generated images?
◆ 4: Sales of AI-generated images
◆ 5: What kind of AI-generated images sell well?
◆ 6: The future of the photo stock industry and AI

◆1: Overview of stock industry
At the time Kudell founded Stock Performer in 2010, Shutterstock was a huge success in the photo stock industry, and the industry rushed to introduce a subscription model that offered large quantities of photos at low cost. My income started to become erratic. This concern is nothing new, and even in the 2000s, when the internet was widespread and anyone could take pictures with cheap equipment, photographers who until then were making millions of dollars per photo sold We seriously thought our careers were over.

And since AI can generate highly accurate images, industry insiders are once again asking themselves, 'Will the photostock industry disappear this time? Kudel analyzed the revenue trends of the top three companies in the photo stock industry and analyzed how the emergence of powerful image generation AI like Midjourney changed the photo stock industry.

◆2: Are the profits of photo stock companies actually declining?
Below is a graph showing the evolution of iStockphoto's earnings, where the blue bar shows earnings, the red line graph shows the number of downloads, and the darker area at the bottom shows the number of uploads. iStockphoto has seen steady revenue growth since 2017, with revenue accelerating further in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even after the second half of 2022, when powerful image-generating AIs began to appear one after another, earnings have remained stable and do not appear to be declining significantly.



Next is Shutterstock. 2022 will see a spike in uploads, but it won't translate to downloads or revenue. Nonetheless, Kudel says there is room for doubt as to the impact of AI. Because big companies are cutting back on advertising as the economy slows down, it's only natural that stock photo and stock video sales will drop.



Unlike the previous two companies, Adobe Stock's revenue has clearly skyrocketed since 2022. Adobe Stock officially

started handling AI-generated stock photos in December 2022, and it is undeniable that this has had some impact on the increase in sales. However, Kudel expects AI sales to account for only a small portion of the increase.



◆3: What percentage of people upload AI-generated images?
Adobe Stock, the only one of the three companies that accepts AI-generated images, counts AI-generated images as 'illustration' even if they look like photographs, and the image is labeled 'AI-generated'. must be tagged.

The percentage of people uploading images tagged with 'AI generation' is as follows. As of May 2023, 13% of Stock Performer users on Adobe Stock have uploaded AI-generated images.



The “AI dependence” of those who upload AI-generated images is roughly divided into two. Below is the color-coded percentage of AI-generated images to all images uploaded during the month for those who upload one AI-generated image per month. People who upload AI-generated images to Adobe Stock are either those who have only touched AI a little (0-10%), or those who concentrate on creating AI-generated images (90-100%). And it turns out that there are very few people in between.



◆ 4: Sales of AI-generated images
One of the indicators derived from the data collected by Stock Performer is 'STR (Sell-Through Rate)'. This is the percentage of files that were sold at least once. According to Kudel, Adobe Stock, which handles AI-generated images, has a STR of 13% for the entire image. In other words, 87% of images uploaded to Adobe Stock in 2022 will still not sell.

While the STR of the entire image is 13%, the STR of the AI-generated image is slightly lower at 9%. This means that so far many AI-generated images do not sell as well as regular images.

That said, low STR isn't much of a problem for AI-generated image contributors. This is because AI-generated images, which can be produced in large quantities, are more cost-effective than general images, which take a long time to produce. Kudel also believes that the STR of AI-generated images could approach the average over time, as image sales take time to grow.



``According to rumors, there are too many AI-generated images in Adobe Stock, and inspections tend to be delayed.

◆ 5: What kind of AI-generated images sell well?
Since the images sold by users cannot be posted directly, the following is the reproduction of the top-selling AI-generated image by Mr. Kudel. Most of the AI-generated images that sell well are not realistic like photographs, but abstract images and wallpaper-like illustrations. At Adobe Stock, AI-generated images are classified as illustrations, so it is thought that purchasers are mainly looking for illustrations, and that they are hit with search terms such as 'abstract', 'background', and 'art'. I'm here.



Realistic images rarely make it to the top of sales, but when they do, portraits and food are often the ones that sell.



“So far, AI-generated imagery shows no signs of replacing high-quality stock photography, especially in images with models,” Kudel said. The demand for illustrations will not decrease, but the competition will be fierce, especially since AI will greatly reduce the time and effort involved in creating illustrations, so Adobe Stock illustrators will use AI tools to create images. It may be better to produce it, ”he commented.

◆ 6: The future of the photo stock industry and AI
Mr. Kudel said that the data used for this analysis is only the data that can be used on Stock Performer, and not all photo stock stakeholders are Stock Performer customers, so it is not necessarily a complete picture. needs attention. In addition, since the data to be handled is an average value, there may be cases where it is completely different depending on the case, and since it is a rapidly changing technology, it is possible that the circumstances may have changed significantly in a year.

On top of that, regarding the impact of AI on the photo stock industry in the future, he said, ``The big question that has not been answered yet is whether companies will cancel the photo stock service and start creating AI-generated images on their own. A small business may not have such resources, but a large company does, and it's these customers that generate the most revenue for the photo stock industry, so if a large company produces images in-house, The photo stock industry will suffer a big blow if it starts to procure.However, large companies are slow to respond to the changing times, and there are still a handful of professional prompt engineers.Therefore , if a large company is a photo stock If there is an industry cut-off, it will be a long way off.'

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