A while back, Getty purchased Unsplash. The company was known for convincing photographers to give their images up for use without the limits of commercial licenses, attribution, etc. Now, Getty has sold the archive of images to Midjourney AI — who will use the high quality images to enrich their databases. Ultimately, it might mean that the AI will come one step closer to getting hands and various other appendages correct. If you’re a photographer shaking your head, you haven’t even gotten to the more insane part.
Along with the archive of images that Getty is selling to Midjourney, they’re bundling in tags and metadata for each image. Getty’s own AI has been able to figure this out for a while now. So when the archive is fully absorbed by Midjourney, the platform will offer those using their imagination a more robust experience.
Editor’s Note: This is an April Fools Joke. But of any of the jokes that we’ve written today, this is the one you should be the most concerned about. If you’re sitting here saying “You shouldn’t joke about that,” I wonder where you were for the years that Phoblographer was the only publication in the photo industry sounding the alarm about this.