Shutterstock Collaborates with UN-Led AI for Good in Advancing Responsible AI

Shutterstock‘s leading stock media company announced they’re collaborating with the ITU (International Telecommunication Union)’s AI for Good platform to help develop and scale ethical AI models, tools, and solutions to advance the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. 

As part of this teaming-up, Shutterstock will deliver a keynote, about the collaboration between humans and machines regarding visual art creation, at the upcoming AI for Good Summit this July in Switzerland.

Shutterstock’s Ongoing Commitment to Ethical AI Development

Shutterstock made its stand regarding the ethical and responsible use of AI technology known early on and has since launched and supported different developments to give users ethical tools and contribute to creating an industry standard. 

Their Contributor Fund, for example, is designed to compensate artists for the use of their original work in AI model training. Or the Create Fund, a project that seeks to guarantee inclusive and accurate visual representation in AI training datasets by financing and supporting historically excluded artists to produce content that fills gaps in their libraries.

They’ve also partnered with first-class tech companies to direct joint efforts for ethical AI development. Their AI image generator, Shutterstock Generate, is built on top of the OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 model but trained solely with approved data from Shutterstock’s library to give their AI-generated images increased legal safety and ethical content. Other partnerships include NVidia and Meta. 

AI for Good: An Initiative to Progress the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Through AI

AI for Good is a digital platform for AI developers and leading global experts to connect and find ways to apply AI technology to solve the world’s most pressing problems framed in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). It’s organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN's specialized agency for information and communication technologies, in partnership with 40 UN Sister Agencies and co-convened with Switzerland. 

Among their many projects, they are hosting the 2023 AI for Good Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, on the 6th and 7th of July. The event expects the participation and attendance of over 3,000 business, government, technology, nonprofit, and startup participants from 182 countries. 

The Summit’s program covers a wide range of topics in AI, from robotics to predictive data analysis to the Metaverse and beyond.

As recently announced, Shutterstock will be part of the speaker lineup, as CTO Sejal Amin and Sr. Director of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Alessandra Sala will deliver a keynote titled “Blending ART + SCIENCE: A Human Approach Towards the Future of Creativity” that will address the ways in which machine learning software and human intervention can merge to produce creative work that is innovative, responsible, and respectful of artists. 

Additionally, the stock media heavyweight will be sponsoring and judging the AI for Good Prize, a competition for global AI creators. 

You can click here to register for the AI for Good Summit.

It’s clear that Shutterstock’s interest in AI industry standards and sustainable, legally safe AI visuals keeps growing, and this collaboration provides a way to also contribute to global society more practically and tangibly.

THE AUTHOR

Ivanna Attie

All About Ivanna

I am an experienced author with expertise in digital communication, stock media, design, and creative tools. I have closely followed and reported on AI developments in this field since its early days. I have gained valuable industry insight through my work with leading digital media professionals since 2014.

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