Fair question. For something as simple as "women laughing with salad", totally, you can generate yourself. But, for anything less concrete/more conceptual, I think needing to explore various options will remain. Often when you are looking for a stock photo you don't have an exact idea of what you want in mind - just something that might fit with the article/concept. So you search a few different things on Shutterstock and see what kinds of stuff exists and looks good. The question is, is it going to be quicker and easier to explore the prompt space (try a prompt, see what happens, revise, see what happens...), or will it be easier explore the space of uploaded photos/generated media by other creators by just searching on a site such as Shutterstock. Basically I think there is still going to be a market for people who just want to find stuff that is generated instead of generating it themselves.
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The "yet" is the important part here.
Once that changes why would you go to Shutterstock anymore?
Their whole thing is being a marketplace, when the supply side of the market gets eaten by someone else they have a major problem.
It seems like a pretty unlikely bet that we won't get something like SD which can do realistic "women laughing with salad" images within a few years.
Fair question. For something as simple as "women laughing with salad", totally, you can generate yourself. But, for anything less concrete/more conceptual, I think needing to explore various options will remain. Often when you are looking for a stock photo you don't have an exact idea of what you want in mind - just something that might fit with the article/concept. So you search a few different things on Shutterstock and see what kinds of stuff exists and looks good. The question is, is it going to be quicker and easier to explore the prompt space (try a prompt, see what happens, revise, see what happens...), or will it be easier explore the space of uploaded photos/generated media by other creators by just searching on a site such as Shutterstock. Basically I think there is still going to be a market for people who just want to find stuff that is generated instead of generating it themselves.