Can't find the perfect stock photo? Create you own with Getty Images' AI tool

Brands, newsrooms, and other content creators often turn to stock images to bring their projects to life. Despite the robust library of images on marketplaces like Getty Images, sometimes the perfect image just isn't there --and that's where AI can help bring your image to life. 

This week, Getty Images launched Product Placement and Reference Image features in its Generative AI by Getty Images and Generative AI by iStock offerings, which are commercially safe generative AI tools that transform text prompts into images.  

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With the Product Placement feature, users can input proprietary product images and generate backgrounds that seamlessly blend into the product to create a realistic visualization of what the product would look like in different environments. Ultimately, this feature should help brands streamline their marketing efforts with less work and time involved. 

Users can now also upload their own reference images, which the tools will then use to create new images, keeping the same qualities as the original photo's color palette and composition, and making it easier for brands to generate content that aligns with their guidelines and style without having to generate new content from scratch. 

"Our customers are seeking efficiency in their creative process without sacrificing quality or taking on risk. With these new features, we're empowering businesses to create high‑quality, custom visuals at scale," said Grant Farhall, chief product officer of Getty Images.

Other companies, including Meta, have unveiled similar marketing tools for advertisers, enabling users to automate tasks such as swapping backdrops for their product images, automatically adjusting creative assets to different aspect ratios, and generating multiple ad text options from an advertiser's original copy.  

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To get started with either plan, visit the Getty Images AI offerings page for details on price. The plan starts at $49 per 25 generations, with the biggest advantage being commercially safe image generation that Getty claims comes with "automatic legal protection of up to $50,000 USD per image." Should the self-service options not suffice, custom enterprise solutions are also available. 

If you are just interested in trying out a commercially safe chatbot with a Structure Reference option, you can try Adobe Firefly; its biggest perk is it's free to use. Beyond that, plenty of image generators are on the market -- see ZDNET's recommendations -- and each one excels in a specific use case.