Picture this scene. Two differing forces have agreed to a deal that concerns images and AI usage.
Getty Images and AI company Perplexity have announced a global, multi-year licensing agreement that allows Perplexity to integrate Getty Images’ creative and editorial library directly into its AI-powered search and discovery tools.
Jessica Chan, Perplexity’s Head of Content and Publisher Partnerships, said, “Attribution and accuracy are fundamental to how people should understand the world in an age of AI. Getty Images shares our belief that the future of AI-powered discovery requires respecting the creators behind the content.”
The partnership represents one of the first major collaborations between a visual content marketplace and a generative AI search platform, signaling a shift in how image licensing and attribution will function in the era of AI-assisted search.
The deal allows Perplexity to display Getty’s images across its products, leveraging Getty’s API technology to embed visuals into responses. The companies say this will improve the user experience by pairing text-based AI answers with high-quality, legally licensed images. It also reinforces proper attribution practices — something many AI models have been criticized for neglecting.
Addressing attribution and authenticity in AI
As AI models increasingly generate and display content scraped from the web, creators, and rights holders have raised concerns about how their work is used.
Getty Images’ Vice President of Strategic Development, Nick Unsworth, said the partnership with Perplexity “acknowledges the importance of properly attributed content and its value in enhancing AI-powered products.”
The initiative also aligns with growing calls for transparency in AI outputs. By ensuring that every image displayed through Perplexity is credited and linked to its original source, the deal could set a precedent for how AI companies approach copyright and creator compensation.
Why this matters for AI and media
For Perplexity, the partnership reinforces its public stance on ethical and verifiable information in the age of generative AI. The company has positioned itself as an “answer engine,” combining AI-generated summaries with links to credible sources, unlike traditional search engines that prioritize links alone.
The Getty–Perplexity partnership comes amid intensifying debate over how AI systems use copyrighted content for training and display. Getty has previously taken legal action against other AI companies that used its imagery without permission, while simultaneously developing its own generative AI tools trained exclusively on licensed data.
This deal suggests a more cooperative path forward — one where AI companies pay for access to licensed materials rather than relying on web scraping. Analysts say such agreements could become an industry standard as policymakers and courts push for clearer rules around AI training data and attribution.
Getty is happy, but others aren’t. Social media platform Reddit filed a copyright lawsuit against Perplexity, accusing it of illegally scraping posts and comments from millions of Reddit users.