More than 160 microstock contributors answered my survey on submitting AI images to Adobe Stock and other agencies, and below are the results. Please be sure to take my new AI survey, which I will analyze in a future issue of this newsletter!

WHAT IT MEANS: This question was meant to validate the rest of the responses. I would have been concerned if most of the respondents told me they weren’t submitting AI, as it would have meant people couldn’t give informed answers. This doesn’t mean the vast majority of Adobe Stock contributors are submitting AI content today, but rather that the people taking the survey are. Since it was labeled an AI survey, I expected it to mainly draw those who are submitting AI content.

WHAT IT MEANS: This also makes sense, as Adobe Stock is far and away the agency that is making contributors the most money. Dreamstime is the only other agency on this list that is worth considering, as I have small but regular sales there, and I am surprised that 11 to 15 percent of respondents are wasting their time with 123RF, Freepik and others.

WHAT IT MEANS: I was pleasantly surprised that 10% said they have no images awaiting review, and about 23% reported having fewer than 50. It does seem that Adobe has made great strides in speeding up the review process, though there are still nearly a quarter of respondents here saying that they have 500, 1,000 or more waiting for their reviews.

WHAT IT MEANS: I had been hearing from many people that they have seen constant rejections, but this data suggests that a very large majority of contributors are NOT seeing widespread rejections. Nearly 60% say that Adobe accepts between 80 and 100 percent of their submissions, which is encouraging. Of course, Adobe is also letting some images with incorrect titles and keywords in (as I covered in this recent video), which junks up the search results.

WHAT IT MEANS: There is clearly a favorite upscaler for the contributors who answered: Gigapixel by Topaz Labs. A few others received a decent number of votes (Upscale.media and Adobe), but I was surprised to see the “Other” catch-all bucket so large. I clearly missed some alternatives that should have been included here, and I have added more choices to my new survey.

WHAT IT MEANS: This is the question I and many others are most interested in… are contributors earning enough money to justify all the work involved in generating, keywording, uploading and submitting AI images? It appears that the jury is still out for many contributors, with 14.3 percent saying they’ve earned $0 so far, and another 63.3 percent saying they are earning between $1 and $100 per month. Giving us hope is that around 15% are earning at least $250 per month, and a very small number have cracked the code and are earning in the thousands per month.

WHAT IT MEANS: Despite the low results on the prior question about earnings, people remain hopeful. Nearly three quarters say they plan to submit more generative AI images than they submit today, and about one quarter plan to submit around the same amount. A very small number plan to scale back, but I would expect this number to get larger if the earnings don’t start growing soon for more contributors. Also, the answers on this question seem to be heading for a head-on collision with the answers on the revenue question. Everyone is hoping that their earnings will grow, but also plan to upload more and more images, which means much greater competition… and that could mean a smaller piece of the earnings pie for everyone in the future.

WHAT IT MEANS: There is significant interest in generating AI videos using OpenAI’s new Sora tool, which we’re thinking may be released for everyone to use later this year. (No date has been set, but some are speculating it will be September during an OpenAI developer conference, while others are thinking OpenAI will wait until after the US presidential election in November.) I know I’m excited, but also anticipating it could be expensive and take a fair amount of time to process video prompts. Stay tuned! I’ll be sure to share Sora updates in future issues!

Take the New Survey Now!

The new edition of the Microstock Life AI Survey will be open for a few more days, so make sure you weigh in on new questions like:

• How many generative AI images do you have online?

• What programs are you using to generate AI images?

• Has Adobe Stock ever blocked your account?

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