Getty Images announced on Tuesday that it’s struck a deal to merge with Shutterstock, creating a combined stock-image company worth $3.7 billion.
The merger appears to be a move to better compete with products like Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL-E, which use artificial intelligence to create fake images. Substack, for one, has a free AI image generator that produces stock photos that aren’t great but might be a decent alternative for bloggers on a budget.
Getty Images and Shutterstock, the two dominant stock-image providers in the US, could face antitrust scrutiny for the merger. They would likely argue that they are competing with companies beyond their traditional peers, like AI firms.
A similar argument didn’t bode well for Kroger and Albertsons, which had their proposed merger scrapped last year. They argued they were competing in the greater retail space with the likes of Walmart, but both regulators and the courts took the stance that grocery stores compete with grocery stores and supercenters compete with supercenters.
Still, the regulatory environment could be getting softer in the coming months, with the Trump administration expected to allow mergers to happen more freely.
Investors seem to think the deal will close: in early trading, Getty’s and Shutterstock’s share prices shot up about 40% and 20%, respectively.
