Shares of Getty Images Holdings Inc. soared as much as 145% on Monday following the announcement of a multi-year licensing agreement with OpenAI. According to The Hindu BusinessLine, the stock closed 90% higher at $1.15 in New York, marking the company's best session since July 2022. The photography repository announced that images from its library will appear in the search and discovery features of ChatGPT, marking a significant reversal for the company. The stock had previously fallen about 55% this year to close at 61 cents on Thursday before the Juneteenth holiday weekend began, making Monday's surge particularly dramatic. However, investors should treat this percentage move with caution, as Getty had been trading near its 52-week low of $0.58 and received a written NYSE notice in March 2026 over non-compliance with the exchange's minimum average closing price requirement.
The companies announced a multi-year licensing agreement that will put Getty's licensed content libraries into OpenAI's search and discovery features inside ChatGPT, with attribution attached. As reported by The Hindu BusinessLine, the deal will allow ChatGPT to use Getty's images for generating visual responses, although it remains unclear if the AI chatbot will be allowed to alter these images in any way. The announcement did not mention any financial terms or specify whether OpenAI will be permitted to use these images to train its generative AI models. It's also unclear if all photo submissions made to Getty, both editorial and stock images, will be covered by the deal or if photographers will have the option to opt out. CEO Craig Peters emphasized that the partnership reflects a shared recognition of the value of licensed visual content and will deliver richer visual experiences to ChatGPT users. "High-quality, licensed visual content makes AI-powered search and discovery more useful and more trustworthy," Peters said in a statement.
The stock-photo company's shares have been hurt by the artificial intelligence "scare trade," which has rippled through various corners of the market, from software and IT services firms to so-called "old economy" industries such as logistics. Getty's shares have been particularly affected due to fears that OpenAI, along with other developers, will poach its business. AI technology can produce realistic images, and the companies behind these tools have repeatedly clashed with photographers and creators whose work helped train their technology. The company initially resisted the technology but has now pivoted to this strategic partnership with OpenAI. However, Getty's broader business challenges remain, including a Q1 2026 revenue of $226.6 million, below analyst estimates of about $240.7 million, and creative revenue fell 4.5% year over year. The company also left full-year 2026 guidance unchanged at $948 million to $988 million.
According to The Hindu BusinessLine, analyst Mark Zgutowicz from Benchmark believes the partnership could improve "licensing optics" and shift the narrative on the stock. Zgutowicz noted that "Getty is attempting to position itself as a licensed visual-content supplier to AI-native search platforms, shifting part of the AI narrative from substitution risk toward monetizable distribution, which has proven difficult in terms of recurring revenue optics thus far." He added that "the deal should help sentiment regarding content disintermediation risk." The partnership is part of OpenAI's broader strategy to build out licensing relationships with media and content companies as it expands ChatGPT into new areas including advertising. Getty Images works with nearly 600,000 content creators and covers more than 160,000 news, sports, and entertainment events each year, according to the company.
The Getty Images partnership is part of OpenAI's broader strategy to build out licensing relationships with media and content companies as it expands ChatGPT into new areas including advertising. OpenAI opened its self-serve Ads Manager to all U.S. businesses earlier this year, broadening a platform that had previously required a minimum $50,000 commitment. Getty Images has been particularly affected by the AI "scare trade," which has impacted various sectors from software to logistics. The company initially resisted the technology but has now pivoted to this strategic partnership with OpenAI. This new partnership comes three years after Getty Images announced it was suing Stability AI, the creators of the popular AI image generation tool Stable Diffusion, alleging copyright violation. In January 2023, several users noted that some of Stable Diffusion's generated images would display a recreation of Getty's watermark, a potential sign that the model had been trained extensively on Getty's library.
