OpenAI has signed a multi-year agreement with Getty Images to integrate the stock photo company's licensed visual content into ChatGPT's search and discovery features. The deal, announced on Tuesday, covers display and attribution of Getty's image library in ChatGPT's visual responses but explicitly excludes AI training rights. Getty Images shares (GETY) rose on the news.
What the deal covers
The partnership allows ChatGPT users to see Getty's rights-cleared photos in visual responses, with proper credit attached. However, OpenAI does not gain the right to use those images to train its AI models. Getty has been one of the most aggressive defenders of photographer and creator rights in the AI era, pursuing legal action against companies that scraped its content without permission. This deal essentially says: you can show our images to your users, but you can't learn from them.
The agreement also reflects a broader pattern in Getty's business strategy. The company previously struck a similar multi-year licensing deal with Perplexity AI on October 31, 2025, suggesting that Getty is systematically building a network of AI distribution partnerships rather than treating each deal as a one-off.
Getty's evolving AI playbook
Getty has not just played defense in the AI era. The company launched its own "Generative AI by Getty Images" tool in September 2023, signaling that it understood the technology was here to stay and that the smarter move was to participate on its own terms rather than simply litigate. The OpenAI partnership represents the next logical step in that evolution: rather than trying to keep its images out of AI products entirely, Getty is finding ways to get them in, with proper compensation and attribution baked into the deal structure.
The positive stock reaction tells you what the market thinks: this is a revenue story. Every time a Getty image surfaces in a ChatGPT visual response, that is monetized distribution through a platform with hundreds of millions of users. The risk, of course, is execution. Multi-year deals sound impressive in press releases, but the financial impact depends entirely on the terms, the volume of content served, and whether ChatGPT users actually engage with visual responses in ways that generate meaningful revenue. Investors should also watch whether Getty can replicate this model with other major AI platforms beyond OpenAI and Perplexity.