Getty Images strikes OpenAI deal for ChatGPT, stock surges 200% after years of AI lawsuits

OpenAI signs deal to show Getty's images in ChatGPT results - Engadget

Getty Images has announced a multi-year partnership with OpenAI that will bring its licensed content libraries to the AI company. The agreement means Getty's content will appear in OpenAI search and ChatGPT. "High‑quality, licensed visual content makes AI‑powered search and discovery more useful and more trustworthy," Getty CEO Craig Peters said in a statement. "This partnership with OpenAI reflects a shared recognition of that, and together we will deliver richer visual experiences to ChatGPT users." Getty, until recently, had taken a strong stance against working with AI companies. In September 2022, Getty banned all AI-generated art from its library. A few months later, it sued Stability AI, alleging copyright violations -- a notion that was rejected late last year. A year after its AI-generated art ban, Getty announced its own generative AI tool, trained on its library and powered by NVIDIA's Edigy AI model. Each of the resulting images came with a royalty-free license. But in October 2025, Getty signed a deal with Perplexity AI, allowing the latter's AI search and discovery tools to access Getty's library. Critically, the release stated that "Perplexity will be making improvements to how it displays imagery, including image credit with a link to source, to better educate users on how to use licensed imagery legally." Perplexity has faced suits around alleged illegal use of copyrighted materials. Notably, Getty hasn't shared any details on whether its images will be used in AI training, although its deal with Perplexity doesn't allow for it.

Getty Images soars after striking a deal with the kind of company it sued

Shares jumped around 200% after Getty agreed to supply licensed pictures to ChatGPT, a sharp turn for a firm that spent years fighting AI in court. For most of the generative-AI era, Getty Images has been the industry's most determined courtroom opponent, the stock-photo giant that sued the people building image generators rather than licensing to them. On Monday it changed sides, and the market rewarded the pivot with the kind of move stock photos are not usually associated with. Getty shares jumped about 200 per cent in premarket trading after the company announced a deal to put its pictures inside ChatGPT. The agreement, announced on 21 June, is a multi-year display partnership with OpenAI. Under it, Getty's licensed content libraries will appear across the search and discovery features of ChatGPT, so that when a user asks the chatbot something that calls for an image, the visual it gets back can be a licensed Getty photograph rather than a synthetic approximation. The pitch, in the words of Getty chief executive Craig Peters, is that high-quality licensed content makes AI-powered search "more useful and more trustworthy." What the companies did not say is as notable as what they did. The release disclosed no financial terms, no revenue split, and, pointedly, nothing about whether Getty's images may be used to train future OpenAI models. That last omission matters, because training is the precise activity Getty has spent years in court trying to stop, and the deal as described is about display, surfacing existing licensed pictures, rather than about feeding them into a model. The reversal is hard to overstate. Getty sued Stability AI, the company behind the Stable Diffusion image generator, on both sides of the Atlantic, alleging that around 12 million of its images had been scraped without permission to train the model. In November 2025 the UK High Court handed down its judgment and largely sided with Stability, rejecting Getty's central copyright claim and finding only narrow liability on a trademark point. Getty was later granted permission to appeal part of the ruling. The OpenAI deal, struck while that fight is still live, looks like a company hedging in public: keep litigating where you have been wronged, sign where you can be paid. It also fits a pattern OpenAI has spent two years building. The company has signed content arrangements with a long list of publishers, from News Corp to the Financial Times and Axel Springer, even as a separate cohort of rights-holders, including Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster, has chosen to sue instead. Getty is now the most prominent name to cross from one column to the other, and the first major visual-content owner to do so on this scale. For OpenAI, the appeal is obvious: licensed photography lets it show users a real picture with a clear provenance, a useful thing as it stuffs ChatGPT with advertising and commerce and tries to justify an $852bn valuation its own investors have begun to question. For Getty, the logic is survival as much as strategy. The company's core business, licensing photographs to media and marketers, is precisely the work generative image tools threaten to undercut, by producing a passable substitute for free. A deal that turns the largest AI chatbot into a distribution channel for licensed Getty pictures, rather than a competitor that renders them obsolete, is a way of being inside the disruption instead of under it. The 200 per cent move suggests investors had been pricing Getty closer to the second outcome than the first. The figure itself comes with a caveat: a premarket spike of that size tends to settle once regular trading opens, and at least one source put the intraday gain nearer 156 per cent. Either way the direction is the same, and so is the story underneath it. The company that tried hardest to fight AI in court has decided the more durable position is to license to it.

Getty Images Strikes Deal with OpenAI, Sending Getty's Stock Soaring

Getty Images and OpenAI announced a multi-year display partnership to bring Getty Images' licensed content into OpenAI search and discovery experiences inside ChatGPT. The news sent Getty's stocks temporarily soaring more than 200% during premarket trading. Getty Images says that its licensed content will appear in ChatGPT, significantly improving the "richness of visual responses" on the popular AI platform. "High‑quality, licensed visual content makes AI‑powered search and discovery more useful and more trustworthy. This partnership with OpenAI reflects a shared recognition of that, and together we will deliver richer visual experiences to ChatGPT users," says Craig Peters, Chief Executive Officer at Getty Images. As Forbes reports, the news that broke overnight has excited investors. At one point in premarket trading, Getty's stock was up over 200% from its Friday close. While the dust had settled a bit, premarket trading was still at $1.35 per share, up 123% from the close last week, shortly before the stock market opened on Monday morning. Getty Images has had an interesting relationship with AI companies so far. The massive stock photo library sued Stability AI in 2023, alleging that the maker of Stable Diffusion had stolen over 12 million of Getty's copyrighted photos. Getty mostly lost that legal battle in the United Kingdom late last year. Getty Images has been a vocal proponent of legislation that seeks to restrict AI deepfake images as well, signaling that the company takes a rather tepid approach to AI technology. Nonetheless, Getty Images has entered a multi-year agreement with one of the biggest AI companies in the market. Getty's extremely brief announcement offers very little in the way of actual details of the agreement, including what "multi-year" means, what the agreement entails, how much money is involved, and how OpenAI will actually use Getty's licensed content. The only thing that is clear thus far is that some portion of Getty's licensed content library will be visible in some way across OpenAI search and ChatGPT's discovery experiences. It's not clear whether OpenAI or ChatGPT will be able to alter the images in any way, what sort of information will appear alongside the images, what level of control Getty Images has over the experience, or whether it is Getty's entire image library that is available for use. When the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) opened this morning at 9:30 AM EDT, Getty's stock opened at $1.40. In less than ten minutes, it dipped down to $1.22, although that is still much higher than its previous close at $0.64 per share. It is a rapidly evolving situation as the market grapples with what OpenAI and Getty's new agreement may mean. Image credits: Getty Images, OpenAI

Getty Images accused AI of wholesale theft. It's now an official ChatGPT image partner.

The AI industry's most fascinating stories often come from unlikely alliances, and this is certainly one of them. Getty Images, a company that has spent years raising concerns about how AI models are trained and how creative work is used, is now officially partnering with OpenAI. The new agreement will allow Getty Images' licensed content to appear across ChatGPT's search and discovery experiences. That means users may begin seeing Getty's professionally licensed photos and visual assets integrated into ChatGPT responses, adding more visual context to searches and AI-generated answers. Getty says the goal is to make AI-powered search more useful and trustworthy by relying on high-quality, licensed content rather than the murky sourcing practices that have sparked countless debates across the AI industry. The great AI truce begins with a handshake What makes this announcement especially interesting isn't just the partnership itself -- it's the broader signal it sends. For the past few years, the conversation around generative AI has largely revolved around copyright, compensation, and whether AI companies should be allowed to train on creative works without explicit permission. Getty Images has been one of the most prominent voices pushing for licensed, permission-based approaches to AI. This new deal doesn't erase those debates, but it does suggest that some content owners see a future where AI companies and rights holders can coexist through formal licensing agreements rather than endless legal battles. For OpenAI, the partnership adds access to one of the world's largest collections of professional photography, journalism, sports imagery, entertainment coverage, and historical archives. For Getty Images, it creates another avenue to distribute and monetize its vast library while reinforcing its long-standing position that AI should be built on properly licensed content. The bigger takeaway is that the AI industry appears to be entering a new phase. Instead of simply arguing over who owns what, some of the largest players are beginning to explore what collaboration might actually look like. And in this case, that collaboration comes from two companies whose relationship once seemed destined for the courtroom rather than a partnership announcement.

Getty Images stock is skyrocketing today thanks to a surprise deal with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI

On Sunday, Getty Images said it has entered into a partnership with OpenAI. The deal will see images from Getty's licensed content libraries surface in OpenAI search results and "discovery experiences within ChatGPT." In other words, when you ask ChatGPT a question now, its reply may include a Getty-licensed photograph or image to help illustrate the topic being discussed. "High‑quality, licensed visual content makes AI‑powered search and discovery more useful and more trustworthy," Getty CEO Craig Peters said in a statement. "This partnership with OpenAI reflects a shared recognition of that, and together we will deliver richer visual experiences to ChatGPT users."

Getty Images partners with OpenAI to supply licensed visuals for ChatGPT

Getty Images has announced a multi-year partnership with OpenAI, allowing its licensed content to be integrated into OpenAI's search and ChatGPT applications. Getty CEO Craig Peters stated, "High-quality, licensed visual content makes AI-powered search and discovery more useful and more trustworthy." The partnership aims to enhance user experience through richer visual content. Historically, Getty Images maintained a strong opposition to collaboration with AI companies. In September 2022, the company banned all AI-generated art from its library and subsequently sued Stability AI for copyright violations, a claim that was rejected late last year. A year following its ban on AI-generated art, Getty introduced its generative AI tool, trained on its content library and powered by NVIDIA's Edigy AI model. Images generated through this tool are available under a royalty-free license. In October 2025, Getty entered into a similar agreement with Perplexity AI, which provides access to its library for Perplexity's AI search tools. The agreement stipulates that Perplexity will improve the display of imagery, including the provision of image credit and links to the source, to educate users on legal usage of licensed content. Perplexity AI has faced legal challenges regarding the alleged illegal use of copyrighted materials. Getty has not disclosed whether its images will be utilized for AI training; however, the terms of its agreement with Perplexity explicitly prohibit this use.

AI Nearly Wiped Out This Stock - An OpenAI Deal Just Doubled It - Getty Images Holdings (NYSE:GETY)

Shares of Getty Images ended last week at about 61 cents, barely above the all-time low of 58 cents it set on June 18. They have since more than doubled, spiking as much as 115%. The catalyst comes from Getty signing a multi-year display agreement that will surface its licensed image library in OpenAI's search and discovery experiences within ChatGPT. The force that nearly buried Getty is now the one saving it. "High-quality, licensed visual content makes AI-powered search and discovery more useful and more trustworthy," said Getty Images CEO Craig Peters. "This partnership with OpenAI reflects a shared recognition of that, and together we will deliver richer visual experiences to ChatGPT users." The Enemy That Almost Killed It Is Now Its Lifeline Creating AI images from a text prompt has been the technology that gutted Getty's investment case. If a model can produce a usable picture for free, the logic went, who pays to license one? Getty fought it. The company banned AI-generated art from its platform in September 2022, then sued Stability AI for copyright infringement, a case dismissed late last year. GETY's Journey To A Penny Stock With Delisting Clock Getty returned to public markets through a merger with the blank-check vehicle CC Neuberger Principal Holdings II, beginning trading on July 25, 2022, at roughly $9.35 a share. The transaction valued the company at nearly $5 billion. What the market believed then was that a thin post-listing float and a marquee content brand justified a stampede. The stock ran to an intraday high of $37.88 on August 2, 2022. Its market value briefly topped $10 billion. What proved wrong came within months. Generative image tools went mainstream, Getty's revenue stalled, and the stock surrendered more than 98% of its value over the following three years. In the first quarter, Getty reported revenue of $226.6 million, missing the Wall Street estimate of $238.8 million. That figure sits below what the company generated in the same quarter four years earlier. Monday's move lands on a company under pressure from its own exchange. Getty Faces Dual Test: NYSE Compliance And AI-Fueled Turnaround Getty disclosed on March 17 that it had received written notice from the New York Stock Exchange regarding trading below $1 for 30 consecutive sessions. It was given a six-month window to cure the shortfall. A single session above $1 does not close that gap. Getty still has to satisfy both the closing-price and 30-day-average thresholds inside the cure period. There is a second overhang. Getty's pending $3.7 billion acquisition of rival Shutterstock remains under regulatory review, with conditional clearance granted in the United Kingdom. One deal does not reverse three years of erosion. The question Wall Street cannot yet answer is whether OpenAI just bought Getty a turnaround or only a reprieve. Price Action Getty's stock price hovered at $1.26 per share, up more than 107% at last check on Monday. Image: Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.