История компании Getty Images: от архивов к искусственному интеллекту.

American visual media company

Getty Images acquired the Michael Ochs Archives in February 2007. The Michael Ochs Archives were described by The New York Times as "the premier source of musician photography in the world". In 2008, the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman (H&F) acquired Getty Images for $2.4 billion. The company was acquired by the Getty family in 2018. The company moved to its current headquarters, in the Union Station office complex in Seattle's International District, in 2011. In 2015, Jonathan Klein became the company's chairman and Dawn Airey was hired as chief executive officer (CEO) of Getty Images. Airey remained in the role until 31 December 2018, at which time she became a non executive director member of its board and Craig Peters was appointed CEO. In 2019, Getty Images introduced Market Freeze, simplifying exclusivity of rights managed images. Later that year, it announced that due to customers' changing needs, it plans to phase out rights managed imagery by 2020 in favor of royalty free images. In December 2021, Getty Images announced its intention to become publicly traded once more through combination with CC Neuberger Principal Holdings II. In July 2022, the SPAC merger was completed and the newly formed parent company of Getty Images went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol GETY. Activist investor Trillium Capital made an unsolicited bid to acquire Getty for billion in April 2023representing nearly a 100 percent premium. Getty turned down the offer questioning its credibility. In September 2023, Getty announced that it was partnering with Nvidia to launch Generative AI by Getty Images, a new tool that lets people create images using Getty's library of licensed photos. Getty will use Nvidia's Edify model, which is available on Nvidia's generative AI model library Picasso.

Since its formation, Getty Images has pursued an aggressive programme of acquisition, buying up many privately owned agencies that had built up the stock photography industry, from small family run firms to larger agencies. By 1999, it had acquired one of the largest agencies, Tony Stone Images; the online art seller Art. com; the sports photography agency Allsport; the market leader in the Benelux and Scandinavia: Word View (1996, from Bert Blokhuis, four offices, for undisclosed sum); journalistic specialists Liaison Agency; Newsmakers, the first digital news photo agency; Online USA, a specialist in celebrity shots; and the Hulton Press Library, the former archive of the British photojournalistic magazine Picture Post. The Hulton collection was sold by the BBC to Brian Deutsch in 1988, when it was renamed Hulton Deutsch. In 1996, the Hulton collection was sold on once more, this time purchased by Getty Images and renamed Hulton Getty. With the acquisition of the Hulton library, Getty Images took ownership of the rights to some 15 million photographs from British press archives dating back to the nineteenth century. Hulton Getty also included photographs from the Keystone Collection, as well as images by notable photographers such as Bert Hardy, Bill Brandt, Weegee and Ernst Haas. Getty has branched out into stock audio, music and sound effects, and also video with the acquisition of EyeWire and Energy Film Library. Getty has partnered with other companies including Slidely for companies and advertisers to use the Getty Images video library of around 2 million videos. In 2000, Getty acquired one of its main competitors, Archive Photos of New York (a division of The Image Bank), for US$183 million. On 9 February 2006, the microstock photo website iStockphoto was acquired by Getty Images for US$50 million. In 2007, Getty successfully purchased its largest competitor, MediaVast, for $207 million. The acquisition gave Getty Images control of WireImage (Entertainment, creative, and sports photography), FilmMagic (fashion and red carpet photography), and Contour Photos (portrait and studio photography). Getty Images also acquired other subsidiaries, including Master Delegates, which includes Isifa Image Service in Prague and Laura Ronchi in Italy. In 2008, Getty purchased Redferns Music Picture Library, the music photo library built up by British jazz photographer David Redfern. On 23 October 2008, Getty Images announced their intention to buy Jupitermedia's online images division, Jupiterimages, for $96 million in cash. The sale went ahead in February 2009; Jupiterimages (including the sites stock. xchng and StockXpert) is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Getty. Jupitermedia, now trading as WebMediaBrands, continues its Internet publishing business, which they didn't sell to Getty Images. On 25 January 2016, Corbis announced that it had sold its image licensing business, including the Corbis Images, Corbis Motion and Veer libraries and their associated assets, to Unity Glory, an affiliate of Visual China Group—Getty's exclusive distributor in China. Concurrently, it was announced that VCG would, after a transition period, license distribution and marketing of the Corbis library outside of China to Getty. Getty now manages Corbis's physical archives on behalf of VCG and Unity Glory. In March 2021, Getty Images acquired Unsplash, a free to use stock photography website, for an undisclosed sum.

In February 2008, it was announced that Getty Images would be acquired by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in a transaction valued at an estimated US$2.4 billion. On 2 July 2008, Getty Images announced the completion of its acquisition. Getty Images common stock ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange at the close of the acquisition and was delisted from the NYSE. In 2012, H&F engaged investment bankers to sell the company. While a price of $4 billion was initially discussed, in August when the private equity firm Carlyle Group emerged as the likely acquirer, the price under consideration was said to be $3.3–3.4 billion. CVC Capital Partners Ltd. was also said to have been bidding but had yet to top Carlyle's price. The sale to Carlyle thereafter was announced at $3.3 billion, with co founders Getty and Klein and the Getty family all carrying their investments over into the new ownership structure. Getty continues to serve as chairman and Klein as chief executive. In July 2022, the company went public again. In 2008, it hosted an exhibition of children for Barnardo's child adoption agency, in an exhibition called "Home Time", aimed at helping to find homes for hundreds of children waiting for adoption. It included photographs by celebrity photographer Cambridge Jones, as well as by Cherie Blair, Bruce Oldfield, Andrew Lincoln, Gail Porter, and Claudia Winkleman. In 2009, Oscar Michelen, a New York attorney who focuses on such damages claims, said: "The damages they're requesting aren't equal to the copyright infringement," and "there's no law that says definitively what images are worth in the digital age." He called Getty's effort to assess four figure fines "a legalized form of extortion". According to Getty Images executive Craig Peters, "The principle is to turn what's infringing use with good intentions, turning that into something that's valid licensed use with some benefits going back to the photographer". On 15 February 2018, Google Images' interface was modified in order to meet the terms of a settlement and licensing partnership with Getty. The "View image" button (a deep link to the image itself on its source server) was removed from image thumbnails. This change is intended to discourage users from directly viewing the full sized image (although doing so using a browser's context menu on the embedded thumbnail is not frustrated), and encourage them to view the image in its appropriate context (which may also include attribution and copyright information) on its respective web page. The "Search by image" button has also been downplayed, as reverse image search can be used to find higher resolution copies of copyrighted images. Google also agreed to make the copyright disclaimer within the interface more prominent.

In 2009, Car Freshner Corp., makers of Little Trees, filed a lawsuit against Getty Images in U. S. Federal Court, Northern District New York (Case 7:09 cv 01252 GTS GHL). Car Freshner claimed that Getty Images had in its catalog photos that included the famous "tree shaped" trademarked car fresheners. In 2011, Getty Images attempted to have the case dismissed, but its motion was denied. In 2012, Getty Images agreed to settle by paying $100,000 to Car Freshener Corp., but admitted no wrongdoing. In September 2013, Avril Nolan brought a $450,000 suit against Getty Images. Nolan alleged that Getty Images improperly let her image be used in advertisements that depicted her as HIV positive. She claimed the ad's depiction of her as HIV positive (she is not) hurt her personal and professional relationships and caused her emotional distress. In March 2014 a judge ruled the lawsuit will be taken to court rather than dismissed. Getty Images settled with Nolan in January 2015. In November 2013, Getty and Agence France Presse were ordered to pay $1.2 million compensation to freelance photojournalist Daniel Morel for using his images posted on Twitter related to the 2010 Haiti earthquake without his permission, in violation of copyright and Twitter's terms of service. In July 2016, Getty was sued, unsuccessfully, for over $1 billion by Carol Highsmith, an American photographer notable for donating her 100,000+ image collection, royalty free, to the Library of Congress, when Highsmith found that Getty had been selling unauthorized licenses of her work (an instance of copyfraud). Highsmith found out about this when she received a letter from a law firm representing Getty, demanding $120 for displaying her pictures on a personal website of hers. In August 2016, Zuma Press, an independent press agency, filed suit against Getty for alleged copyright violations and unauthorized licensing of more than 47,000 images.

Getty Images has continued the practice that Corbis (whose license it acquired in 2016) has been criticized for of claiming copyright, watermarking and selling images that are in public domain, including images related to The Holocaust like the Warsaw Ghetto boy photo, the Polish cavalry in Sochaczew photograph, or images created by NASA. Public domain photos from historical photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans have long been available for unrestricted downloading from the United States Library of Congress. The exact same images are also available from Getty Images, subject to a licensing fee of up to $5,000 for a six month term. This demonstrates an example of copyfraud.

On January 17, 2023, Getty Images said it was suing Stability AI over the use of Getty's images to train AI art generator Stable Diffusion and for imitating the Getty Images' trademark.

The Getty Images Prestige Grant is awarded to two commercial photographers to realise a dream project, awarding them US$15,000 and $7,500 respectively. The first recipients, in 2015, were Lisa Barnard and Andy Lo Po.