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Reviewed and published by trentmaziarz, March 18, 2026. Discovered and drafted by our automated research pipeline.
Shutterstock licenses its image, video, music, and metadata library to major AI companies — including OpenAI, Meta, NVIDIA, and Apple — to train their generative AI models. This has become a significant and fast-growing revenue line for the company.
Details
Shutterstock's AI licensing business produced $104 million in revenue in 2023. Major customers for training data include Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple, with OpenAI having signed a six-year deal in 2023. Revenue from Shutterstock's Data, Distribution, and Services product offering — which includes AI data deals — increased 16% year-over-year in 2025, reaching $203.3 million, or 21% of total revenue. Contributors whose content is used in these deals are compensated through a dedicated Contributor Fund, and they have an opt-out mechanism.
Products affected
Shutterstock Data licensing
Sources & Evidence
Company Disclosure
Other practices by Shutterstock
Data AnalysisThrough its 2021 acquisition of three AI companies under the Shutterstock.AI subsidiary (Pattern89, Datasine, and Shotzr), Shutterstock offers AI tools that analyze the visual and compositional elements of ad creatives and predict their performance before a campaign goes live.ModerationShutterstock uses automated AI systems to flag and filter offensive, adult, or policy-violating content from its contributor-submitted library and from AI-generated outputs on its platform. These safeguards also include multi-layered controls to prevent generation of harmful content via its AI tools.RecommendationShutterstock uses a custom-built neural network to power visual similarity search and reverse image search across its entire library, allowing users to find matching content by uploading a photo rather than typing keywords. This applies to both images and video.
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