Getty Images and OpenAI deal: licensed photos in ChatGPT search

Getty Images has signed a multi-year licensing deal with OpenAI, and licensed images from Getty's catalog will now appear in ChatGPT's search and discovery features, the companies announced on Jun 22, 2026. Neither side disclosed financial terms or whether OpenAI will use Getty content to train future models.

What did Getty and OpenAI agree?

Getty and OpenAI agreed a multi-year licensing deal that places Getty’s licensed images into ChatGPT’s search and discovery features; the agreement does not reveal price or training rights. The primary facts are the length framing as multi-year, the placement of Getty content inside ChatGPT search and discovery, and the explicit nondisclosure of financial terms and whether the images will be used for model training.

The announcement positions Getty content as a licensed layer inside ChatGPT’s interface rather than an open corpus. Getty CEO Craig Peters said, "licensed content makes AI-powered search more useful and trustworthy." The companies did not publish contract sums or confirm any training dataset commitments.

How did markets react and what is Getty’s recent stance on AI?

Getty’s stock jumped about 200 percent in premarket trading after the announcement, Bloomberg reports, reversing a share-price slump that had seen the stock drop roughly 55 percent earlier this year. That market reaction came immediately after the licensing news was made public on Jun 22, 2026.

Getty had originally pushed back against AI image generation, then built its own image generator and sued Stability AI. The company is also awaiting regulatory approval of its planned $3.7 billion acquisition of Shutterstock, a deal that remains pending as of the announcement.

Why it matters

Licensed Getty imagery appearing inside ChatGPT changes the economics of image discovery inside a widely used AI interface and signals mainstream platforms will seek paid, cleared sources rather than rely solely on scraped or synthetic content. For publishers and image-rights holders, a visible, licensed channel inside ChatGPT could restore a negotiated revenue path and introduce clearer attribution, while also raising questions about how those assets are used behind the scenes by model developers.

What to watch

Watch for two concrete milestones: any future disclosure from OpenAI or Getty about whether Getty content will be used to train models, and regulatory movement on Getty’s pending $3.7 billion acquisition of Shutterstock. Either development would clarify whether this deal is primarily about content placement, compensation, or broader dataset access.