Microsoft just launched MAI-Image-2.6, a new image generation and editing model that pulls real-time web context to ground visual details. It brings granular control over composition and styles for creative workflows, alongside a lighter Flash model that delivers production quality at less than half the price.
Microsoft just rolled out MAI-Image-2-Efficient, a high-throughput text-to-image model built for production scale. It runs 22% faster than its predecessor while slashing pricing by nearly 41% to $19.50 per million image output tokens. Developers can access it now in Microsoft Foundry and MAI Playground, with integrations headed to Copilot, Bing, and PowerPoint.
Lightricks just launched LTX Video-13B, a 13-billion-parameter open-source video model available on GitHub and Hugging Face. It brings multi-scale rendering that generates high-res clips up to 30 times faster than peers, and clever quantization lets it run on consumer GPUs. Plus, it's free to license commercially for teams under $10M in revenue.
Shutterstock and Getty Images just rolled out major visual AI upgrades powered by Nvidia’s Edify architecture. Shutterstock launched a commercial beta for Generative 3D that creates editable assets and 16K HDRi lighting maps from prompts. Meanwhile, Getty doubled its generation speed to four images in six seconds and added fine-tuning, both leveraging commercially licensed data.
ElevenLabs just rolled out a text-to-sound model that generates sound effects, short instrumental tracks, and soundscapes from text prompts. Fine-tuned on Shutterstock's licensed audio library, the tool is now available to all users. Creators and game developers can now spin up custom Foley and background audio without scouring stock libraries.
Shutterstock just launched a suite of OpenAI-powered creative editing tools, turning its massive photo library into fully customizable assets. Users can now expand scenes, brush to swap objects, and replace backgrounds directly on the platform. Contributors still get paid when their edited work is licensed, but AI-altered content cannot be resubmitted.
Disney just found itself under fire from the creative community over a Loki Season 2 poster suspected of using generative AI in its background. While artists flagged artifacts in the Shutterstock stock image, Shutterstock later investigated and insisted the piece was crafted with traditional software rather than AI tools.
Shutterstock is tapping NVIDIA Picasso to let creators generate and light 3D scene backgrounds using text or image prompts. The models, trained on fully licensed data, spit out 8K 360-degree environment maps on demand. Why it matters: It offloads the tedious chore of background mapping and scene lighting, letting 3D artists focus their energy on core hero assets.
OpenAI just signed a new six-year agreement with Shutterstock, securing training access to its massive library of images, videos, music, and metadata. In return, Shutterstock gets priority access to OpenAI's latest models, bringing advanced synthetic editing tools to its platform and GIPHY. High-quality, legally cleared training data is becoming the industry's ultimate moat.
Shutterstock is rolling out full legal indemnification for enterprise customers using its generative AI images. The protection covers copyright and IP claims following an on-demand human review, matching the terms offered for traditional stock assets. It follows a similar move by Adobe as platforms race to assure cautious corporate buyers.
Google just introduced new features to help users identify AI-generated images, led by a tool called "About this image." It lets you see when an image was first indexed, where it first appeared, and where else it has shown up. Google is also embedding metadata labels into AI-generated files, with Midjourney and Shutterstock on board.
Shutterstock is hosting its first-ever virtual Gen AI Showcase on May 17, featuring product demos of its Shutterstock Generate workflow. The agency is bringing in experts from AWS and Nvidia to discuss how AI models impact creative industries and artists' livelihoods.
Shutterstock just rolled out a text-to-image generator powered by OpenAI's DALL-E 2 inside its Creative Flow platform. Crucially, the AI-generated images are immediately ready for commercial licensing, and the company plans to pay contributors whose works helped train the model.
Meta just expanded its partnership with Shutterstock to train and evaluate AI models using millions of licensed images, videos, and music tracks. Shutterstock says it will continue compensating contributing artists through its contributor fund. The move gives Meta a clean, copyright-safe training pipeline as generative AI faces mounting legal battles.
Reface's CEO just broke down how generative AI is upending both creative work and company strategy. With DreamStudio hitting a million users in under a month and battles brewing over copyright, the big lesson for businesses is clear: start baking AI into your products to turn everyday customers into creators.
