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and we start the movie the opening montage of the movie is just a greatest hits of new york city b-roll footage and It is literally just, like, they just went on to, like, some website where they could buy, you know, stock footage, and they just, like, bought as much New York footage as they could find from,

like, iStock.

And lots of news footage of 9-11.

Yes, shoddily, like, CGI'd or, like, green-screened into old TV sets.

It's something off Fiverr.

It could be stock logos that they pull from iStock, things like that.

And the problem is, if you're doing it, so is a million other people.

And somewhere along the lines, whether it's the acronym of your business name, or maybe it's just the name of your business that you didn't thoroughly research, you're going to overlap and intersect.

You can pro- AI has opened that door for people if you can't afford it with your first book.

'Cause my first book that went out, my very first one, was a picture from iStock, where I put some words over it, and I published that.

I formatted it in Word in a template that I downloaded from KDP.

Oh, God.

And or you get stock footage.

So you just go online and you go to iStockphoto or wherever, Shutterstock, and you search for footage.

And both those things are fine.

You doing it yourself is obviously takes a good bit of time and expense.

It told me who probably owns blah, blah, blah.

I also told it to ignore any iStock imagery because I know, you know, I'm allowed to use that.

And it was overly careful, which is great.

It was like, hey, this might be owned by, you know, some, you know, like I'm trying to remember, like even some, like somebody had created a graphic and posted it on their site and like, oh, this might be, held i was like oh yeah that's my friend he made a little thing or whatever like i know that that's that's fine oh that's cool yeah i don't think mine was that

That's actually better conversion than basically AI-generated people.

So make sure you go to websites like Pexels or Unsplash, iStock.

These are all amazing libraries of really good ethically sourced royalty-free images of real people.

So they're not AI-generated.

And I had gone through and found way too many clips and it's expensive.

So it's all, so Macrochip is made from all human made stock photo clips, literally from iStockPhoto.com. Amazing.

Thousands of dollars worth of stock footage.

So I'm like, funding these human artists when I could just use AI, right? But for me, it's not fun to use AI.

Published on July 18, 2025.

During the weekend of June 7th to 8th, Getty Images brought its Create by Getty Images interactive event series to Atlanta, spotlighting Getty Images and iStock's creative talent.

All this while responding to the growing demand for fresh, authentic visual content that reflects today's evolving world, particularly the modern workplace.

This intimate, hands-on event wasn't just about making images.

It was about building community, empowering creators, and producing content shaped by deep research and regional insight.

It was also an opportunity for creators to connect, learn from Getty Images experts, and produce high-quality content for their portfolios and Getty Images platforms.

We caught up with Tristan Norman, Director and Head of Creative Insights and Curation for the Americas, and Renata Simoes de Aguiar, Director and Head of Creative Content for the Americas, to learn how this event, and the larger CREATE initiative, bridges Getty Images and iStock's commitment to both creators and customers.

A brief history.