00:15:17 · John Coogan
[00:15:17] S1: Licensing. Yeah. All sorts of things. So certainly, in the face of growing competition, consolidation of an industry is very normal. That makes a lot of sense. This doesn't this doesn't seem like it should raise any regulatory flags, yet it did in The United Kingdom. Getty Images has called off the Shutterstock deal after The UK created some barriers around it. So the $3,700,000,000 deal would have created a visual content company able to offer a more expansive library to users, says The Wall Street Journal. So on Tuesday, Getty delivered a written notice to Shutterstock terminating their planned tie up, which was first announced in January 2025 and and received clearance from the justice department in America in April. So pretty quick turnaround in The United States. The $3,700,000,000 deal would have created a visual content company able to deliver a more expansive library to users, helping meet booming demand for licensed images and videos as artificial intelligence disrupts the business of content creation. Getty stock slipped 1.7% in pre market trading. Shares of Shutterstock ticked up 1%, so maybe the Shutterstock shareholders are happy about remaining an independent company. The termination came after Getty last week said that its board voted to not proceed with the deal if it meant shut selling Shutterstock's editorial business, a condition required by the UK Competition and Markets Authority. So the decision to by Getty to abandon its merger with Sutterstock was ultimately a commercial choice. So the chair of independent inquiry group that led the CMA's investigation of the deal, the inquiry group found that a loss of competition between the two businesses would reduce choice for UK media outlets and could lead to higher prices. And I would I would assume that this would give them some sort of pricing power in the face of, you know, essentially unlimited free editorial images in the form of AI generated images. If you want to go with the real thing, you have to pay a little bit more, but that sort of offsets all the pressure of the customers that are leaving and no longer paying because they don't need to pay because they're generating them with generative AI. So this felt like a very logical story, and I'm I'm a little bit uncertain that this is a good decision for The UK to help these businesses.
00:17:39 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Rodrigo Liang
It feels like it's just going to wind up hurting both of them. [00:17:43] S0: Yeah. Are UK media outlets not allowed to use AI content? [00:17:48] S1: I don't think that there's any broad rule against it. No. So they you would it would be a deliberate choice, and I'm sure there's plenty I I can imagine that the Financial Times does not use AI images, and that's by choice, and they make that very clear. And there's probably a disclosure. And if they of course, they will use an AI image if they're talking about the AI image industry, but in terms of what you see on the front page of the Financial Times, it's almost always editorial images. Yeah. That image. This is from Reuters. And and that is an editorial distribution and something that is licensed. And and occasionally, they need a photo for to illustrate something, and they might use AI. [00:18:28] S0: Okay. So I was trying to figure out why the headline number here was 3,700,000,000. Yeah. Because it was based on the 01/06/2025 share prices, not today's prices, which are far, far, far lower. Yeah. Shutterstock is sitting at $329,000,000 market cap. [00:18:48] S4: Mhmm. [00:18:48] S0: Getty is at $340,000,000 market cap. Woah. So these businesses have been really, really beat up over the period since they decided, hey, we should [00:18:58] S1: Yeah. Tie up. Interesting. So is there is there a potential [00:19:02] S0: So The UK, I think regulators are actually trying to just kick these companies while they're down.
00:19:02 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Tyler
[00:19:02] S0: So The UK, I think regulators are actually trying to just kick these companies while they're down. [00:19:07] S1: Is that what's happening? Is it a situation where mean, Getty is possible. I mean, it could just be like a just a complete mistake. I mean, you go back to Meta and you think about U. S. Regulators blocked Meta from buying a VR fitness company that they said would create a monopoly in the VR fitness industry. And of course, the VR fitness industry never happened. Like it's not an industry worth monopolizing. And so if you think about the business model of Quest, like would it have been advantageous? Maybe, but it's worth letting Meta take a shot at that and see if having a VR fitness company in the portfolio will actually get that product to, you know, to scale. Tyler, what do have to say [00:19:54] S5: about Another interesting anecdote is The UK blocked Meta from buying Giphy in 2022. [00:19:59] S1: Yes. [00:19:59] S5: So to prevent a monopoly in GIFs, I presume. Yes. This could be pretty dangerous. [00:20:05] S1: Yes. Which is also odd. What what does Giphy power the GIFs that you see in iMessage? You know what I'm talking about? When you go to you you go to there's Genmoji, there's stickers, and then there's also hashtag images. And you can find images, and you can send, you know, different pictures and and GIFs. I wonder if these are from Giphy or [00:20:28] S5: It's powered by Bing, [00:20:29] S1: not by Bing. So there's competition in this market. Yeah. I don't know. It's it
00:20:29 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[00:20:29] S1: not by Bing. So there's competition in this market. Yeah. I don't know. It's it [00:20:35] S0: says Canva doesn't label AI in their stock images. That's so annoying. So, yeah, I didn't even know Canva was a player here. But it would make sense to like [00:20:45] S1: You're you're in Canva and you want to, you know, have a picture of a forest on your greeting card and you can pick from a library. Some of them will be generated, some of them won't, and they probably also have a a generative AI tool where you can generate a new image. But if you're just go looking for a generic stock image that's already been described, you can probably pull from whatever library is out there. Anyway Yeah. Canva partners with [00:21:06] S0: Getty Images, but then they're also featuring generated images.
00:21:06 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:21:06] S0: Getty Images, but then they're also featuring generated images. [00:21:10] S1: Mhmm. Anyway, let me tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI. Their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. There is another interesting article in The Wall Street Journal on the cover, the front page of the main section. The what what did they what did they actually call what did they actually call the main section? There's the business and finance section. Is this just world news? I don't know. Anyway, on the cover of The Wall Street Journal, it's the world's creepiest office and people won't stay away. This is, the New York complex vacated by IBM has become a magnet for urban explorers. We have a video of this place. And if you're a scrappy startup looking to expand, this might be the key to success, the ultimate lock in factory in sort of rural New York, I think. We'll we'll get into it. So this is in Summers, New York. I don't know exactly how far away that is from Manhattan. [00:22:09] S0: Yeah. So if you were like a NeoLab and your name was like Ominous Intelligence Yeah. There we this could be a great sort of HQ, potentially, you know, your first little micro data center. Very James Bond villain sort of vibe. And, yeah, it looks looks like you could make it, you know, really, really homey. [00:22:32] S1: How far is it from Manhattan? Let's see. Okay. It is one hour. You can be in the city in an hour. [00:22:40] S0: Imagine walking these halls late at night after a long day at work. Yes. It wouldn't be it wouldn't be creepy at all.
00:22:40 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:22:40] S0: Imagine walking these halls late at night after a long day at work. Yes. It wouldn't be it wouldn't be creepy at all. [00:22:49] S1: Yes. Robert Carlton was getting the mail one day in April when he saw a group of teenage boys sprinting away from nearby woods. He cut them off at the road and raised his arms. I just said, stop. It's over, the 62 year old retired engineer recalled. Soon, he said three pursuing New York State police troopers emerged from the tree line and arrested seven juveniles. The criminal charge? Trespassing on the former IBM campus here. Disrespecting international business machines. Don't do it, folks. The long vacant site has become a magnet for so called urban explorers who prowl abandoned malls, hospitals, power plants, amusement parks, factories, and any other unused, disused you can breach. [00:23:35] S0: Enough of the graffiti. Yeah. Do you think put a How dare [00:23:39] S1: in here? We gotta figure out how much How dare [00:23:41] S0: they write all over The [00:23:45] S1: former home of international Office business of Yeah. Exactly. What was the what was the IBM AI Watson? Watson, the machine intelligence What do you mean [00:23:54] S0: it was? [00:23:55] S1: Was probably [00:23:56] S0: Still at frontier.