🤝 Shutterstock and Getty Images are merging

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TOP STORY
🤝 Shutterstock and Getty Images are merging

This week, Getty Images and Shutterstock announced they are joining together in a $3.7 billion deal.

This merger will create the largest stock photo company in the world and help them compete with new AI image tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Runway ML.

• Both companies have adapted to the rise of generative AI by licensing their vast libraries to AI firms for training and introducing their own AI tools.

• Getty launched an image generator trained on its licensed photos, while Shutterstock struck AI deals with Apple, OpenAI, Meta, and Google.

Despite these efforts, challenges like declining prices, contributor dissatisfaction, and AI competition persist.

Here’s a breakdown of notable platforms now owned by the merged company:

• Getty Images: iStock, Unsplash, Art.com, Hulton Archive, and more.

• ShutterStock: GIPHY, PicMonkey, Envato, PremiumBeat, TurboSquid, Pond5, and more.

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VIDEO EDITING
🆓 Captions launches “Free” plan

Captions, a popular video editing app, announced that it plans to offer a free plan on January 19 to attract more users and compete with popular apps like CapCut.

• The free tier will include: Access to an integrated ring light and teleprompter feature, an easy-to-use editor, instant-captions in 29 languages, a library of effects, and unlimited video exports (with no watermarks)!

• This move positions Captions to fill the gap if CapCut faces restrictions in the U.S. due to its connection to TikTok and ByteDance.

CEO Gaurav Misra explained that many creators rely on apps like CapCut, which has over a billion downloads, but uncertainty around TikTok’s future presents an opportunity for Captions.

With TikTok’s fate uncertain and CapCut potentially impacted, Captions aims to secure a foothold among creators.

Misra emphasized the importance of providing accessible editing tools, ensuring creators have affordable options to produce content, regardless of the outcome for TikTok or its sister apps.

ANIMATION
🎨 LottieFiles releases “AI Prompting” for Themes

This week, LottieFiles released “AI Prompting” for theming, allowing users to create and apply color themes to their Lottie animations in seconds.

• This new feature is apart of LottieFiles “Motion Copilot” that they last June.

• Motion Copilot initially allowed users automate the process of keyframe generation, allowing creators to describe animations using intuitive prompts in 14 languages.

• Last month, Lottie released “Theming,” allowing you to create custom themes.

This new addition combines the copilot and themes, allowing users to generate multiple themes within a single text prompt (and stored in a single .Lottie file).

Users can seamlessly switch between light, dark, or custom modes without duplicating assets.

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📰 Other news you might’ve missed:

• Adobe’s “TransPixar” AI model can generate videos with transparent backgrounds.

• Figma released new improvements to “Frames,” including (0,0) origin points for new frames on a blank canvas, new frames now remembering previous dimensions, and more.

• Freepik released “MiniMax Live Illustrations,” a new video mode introducing natural movement and expressions to 2D art, now available in its AI video generator.

• KREA AI released new video and video-to-audio AI models to its platform including Kling 1.6, Hunyuan, and 01-Live.

• Runway now allows you to upscale your generations up to 4K resolution inside Gen-3 Alpha.

• Notion users can now paste a shareable link directly into Notion.

• Rive now allows you to set keyframe for hide and unhide in “Layout.”

• Bezi can now directly add and modify components like rigidbodies and physics materials to your objects.

• Magnific released bulk upscaling, bulk image generation with “Mystic,” and a new gallery filter that filters by “Spell” type.

• Freepik now supports the “Kling 1.6” AI-video generation model.

• Rive released v2.3 which includes arrays, custom haptics, updates to its app import, and more.

• Screen Studio is adding “Data Masking” to the app, allowing you to mask sensitive data.

• Gamma has added two “Recraft” image models, available to all Pro users.

• Lottielab Pro is available for $18 (down from $24) until January 31.