Perplexity, the AI search engine, has just entered into a multi-year licensing agreement with Getty Images. As part of the deal, the AI startup, often accused of plagiarism, will now have to credit the images it uses. This news caused Getty’s stock to soar by nearly 50%.
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A Deal to Properly Credit Images
Formally, the deal is portrayed as a win-win partnership. Perplexity will integrate Getty Images’ API to display high-quality “creative and editorial” visual content in its search results. However, the real trade-off, and a pivotal aspect of the agreement, focuses on attribution. The startup has committed to “enhance” how it displays images. Specifically, this means including clear credits and, importantly, direct links back to the source. This represents a significant shift for a platform criticized for its tendency to present information without citing its origins.
Perplexity Buys Legitimacy
It’s clear that Perplexity had little choice but to comply amid increasing legal pressure. The startup faces a barrage of criticism and lawsuits over its content scraping methods. Reddit recently sued it for what they called “industrial-scale illegal pilfering,” joining other publishers such as the Japanese newspapers Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun.
Perplexity was even caught red-handed pulling content from a Wall Street Journal article, including a Getty photo, without any permission. Thus, this agreement seems less like a partnership and more like an attempt to legalize its practices.
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The Market Welcomes the End of the “Wild West”
The financial markets reacted immediately. Getty Images’ stock price shot up at the announcement of the deal, jumping up to 50% at the start of the trading session, before settling around +19%. This surge indicates that investors see an end to the AI “Wild West,” where startups could plunder content without compensation. Now, data catalogs are seen as an essential resource that AIs will need to legally pay for. Getty, which had previously sued Stability AI over similar issues, sees its intellectual property defense strategy validated.
What’s the Takeaway?
Perplexity’s maneuver is quite transparent. After acting like pirates by scraping the entire web without permission, the startup finds itself ensnared in legal nets and seeks to purchase respectability. While the company may release statements about “attribution and accuracy,” this deal is mostly about forced regularization. For Getty Images, it’s a total victory. They not only affirm the value of their catalog, but they also send a message to the entire industry: the party’s over, it’s time to pay up. This confirms that high-quality data is the real fuel for AI, and this fuel now has a price.