Apple recently struck an important agreement with stock photography provider Shutterstock to license millions of images for training its artificial intelligence models. According to reports by Reuters, this deal is estimated to be between $25 million and $50 million, placing Apple among several tech titans competing to secure large data troves to fuel their AI systems.
Sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Reuters that Apple, along with Meta, Google and Amazon, have recently signed licensing agreements with Shutterstock that provide access to hundreds of millions of images, videos and music files from its library. While details regarding Apple’s deal remain undisclosed, Shutterstock Chief Financial Officer Jarrod Yahes told Reuters that initial agreements between these tech firms typically ranged between $25-50 million each; most later extended.
Demand for AI training data has created a vibrant market, with businesses turning to various sources for content acquisition. According to more than 30 people who had knowledge of such deals, prices vary depending on both type and buyer of content – for instance Daniela Braga from Defined.ai told Reuters that companies typically pay $1-2 per image, $2-4 for short form video and $100-300 per hour of longer films with text rates at around $0.001 per word.
Privacy Concerns Loom Large
With AI’s rapid advancement over recent years, an increasingly fierce battle is emerging over which data will be used to train these systems. Tech titans such as OpenAI, Google, Meta and Microsoft have used vast troves of online information such as copyrighted news articles, books and social media posts without prior consent from or compensation to content creators for training their AI models without explicit authorization or compensation from content owners.
Publishers and creators who feel their intellectual property is being exploited have voiced outrage against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging millions of their articles were used to train chatbots which now compete directly against them. Their lawsuit seeks billions in damages as well as destruction of AI models containing NYT content.
As AI companies face legal hurdles, some are proposing a licensing system where AI companies would pay content owners for training data access. At a Senate hearing, lawmakers from both parties backed media industry demands for OpenAI and other AI training companies such as DeepMind to license news articles used to train their AI. National Association of Broadcasters, News Media Alliance and Conde Nast leaders spoke in favor of mandatory licensing while some even claimed unauthorised data use violates copyright law.
OpenAI and some experts argue that licensing all training data would be unfeasible, with mandatory licensing potentially creating power concentration among large tech firms and burdening AI startups. As of now, however, whether licensing should be legally mandated remains up for debate.
Google recently signed an estimated $60 million per year agreement with Reddit for exclusive access to Reddit data for training its AI systems, according to media reports. As this area continues to develop and privacy issues become ever more pressing, companies continue to strike lucrative data deals with one another in an effort to gain exclusive access.
The Struggle for AI Supremacy The Shutterstock deal underscores the vital role data plays in creating cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems. Companies like Apple, Google and Meta are competing to build advanced models, so accessing vast datasets has become key differentiators between them. By licensing millions of images from Shutterstock for its AI capabilities across applications ranging from computer vision and image generation through virtual assistants to augmented reality experiences – Apple plans on taking an aggressive stance towards improving its AI abilities across an array of uses from computer vision and image generation all the way through virtual assistants and augmented reality experiences – to improve its AI capabilities across applications including computer vision/image generation/virtual assistants/augmented reality experiences.
tech giants’ willingness to pay millions for AI training data underscores its immense economic potential. As AI becomes ever more integrated into products and services across industries ranging from healthcare and finance, entertainment, and education – the market for AI solutions will undoubtedly expand dramatically over time. By investing heavily in its development now, Apple is setting themselves up to capture an impressive share of this vast marketplace in coming years.
Apple has declined to provide further comment regarding the specific details of their deal with Shutterstock, though in a statement issued they mentioned they are “committed to developing AI systems in an ethical and responsible manner” while respecting intellectual property rights of others.
Business Research Insights estimates the AI data market at roughly $2.5 billion currently, with projected growth to almost $30 billion within a decade – underscoring its immense significance among tech giants competing to dominate AI dominance. While industry players discuss this potential gold rush of user privacy and data rights issues, there remain uncertain long-term repercussions for user data rights and user privacy rights.
