An undetermined amount of compensation if the AI has scraped your artwork to create new art..still a very scary thought for artists. AI generated art was always a feared possibility and this will seriously harm artists that try to make a living from their own art. Whilst this solution seems fair on the surface, it's going to become infinitely cheaper to create AI generated art than to hire an artist or purchase a license to use a piece commercially. It's a huge win for Shutterstock however

I'm glad to see Shuttershock isn't just asleep behind the wheel

Not only did they find a solution to their own death, they might've found a lightly more ethical way to engage with AI creations (while also not having to give you a reason to minutia-prompt yourself), which I hope more may adopt, since the overall impression I've had from studying some AI model creators' twitters was 'dont care'

Feels like we have a Spotify & Bandcamp type solution now at least

The AI stuff is still very generic though.

I'm not sure what you think Shutterstock was paying "artists" for pictures of "woman holding candle while smiling at dog", but it wasn't a lot.

Absolutely a win for Shutterstock, it's a dream come true. Just throw some raw data at AI and generate infinite stock art for pennies.

What it might spell the death of is art. And imho that's a terrifying thing to consider. We may reach a point where culture is no longer the output of human self-expression. That sounds deeply dystopic.

I think that for more specific and extensive work, artists won't be out of a job any time soon. But for smaller projects, like making a personal webpage, will benefit greatly from AI art, as being generic won't be a problem. (I'm also speaking from my own experience, where I was able to generate a decent image for my architecture project in Stable Diffusion within minutes, instead of Googling the image for hours)

Sorry but 99.9999% of 'make a webpage' projects just use stock images/art from sites like Unsplash and Evanto.

Do they know that AI created works can't be copyrighted?

This is scary. I work in visual effects for movies and even if AI is still far from being able to do complex things, I can clearly see it possible with enough data. In two-three years it has made giant steps in AI image generations, faster than me and any my collegues imagined. I already see some professional people which is starting to use AI + their skills (good eye and artistic sense) to generate great pieces and this is where is headed at the moment but soon I guess will be completely AI for generic and also specific images ( see nvidia image generator)

You’re far from the first person to think new tools will degrade the value of art in society, and I have no doubt this attitude will be proven just as wrong as it was in 1900.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction

The history of man is automating themselves out of a job.

Any one who buys AI art can go fuck themselves.

It's true, I've also used the likes of Unsplash, but with AI art, the ownership falls onto the person that gave the prompts in the first place, potentially shifting the value from "cheap" to basically "free" in the market. Why pay the artist, when you can describe what you want, get it done in mere minutes and only pay the price of electricity your PC uses, while having full ownership of the generated artwork? As AI evolves to be more creative, detailed (and also better in drawing text), I believe this will be a real problem over time, starting from generic work, as "placeholders".