Shutterstock, Inc. (NYSE:SSTK) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Nat Schindler: Okay, sorry. There was a blank in the call right there when you said my name. Quickly, wanted to ask how people are really using the AI. People that are using the AI, from what you can tell, that are using it actually for commercial purposes as opposed to just playing and creating, of those that are using it for commercial purposes, are they using it to create images from whole cloth or do you see it being used more as kind of an easy to use Photoshop, editing and changing things that already exist?

Paul Hennessy: Yes, I’ll take that one, Nat. First of all, it’s still early days. We’re starting to assess what is initial behavior versus what is a behavior pattern, and again it’s very early. But here’s what we’re seeing – we’re seeing it all. There are those customers that are just coming in and saying, AI is on everybody’s lips, let me check it out, and Shutterstock is an outstanding place to come check that out because they can not only produce the images with a really high quality image creator, but they can also manipulate that content, just like they’re used to doing here at Shutterstock. So do I believe over time that AI generative images become the ultimate tool replacement? I think so. I think that people using their words to create content rather than other products to manipulate content makes a lot of sense to us, and we suspect that to be the case going forward.

But again, it’s early days, and what are customers are now able to use is ultimately what we’re creating for them, so I’m sure customers have advanced demands and use cases that we have not yet discovered, but we’ve positioned our company to have a front-row seat for that and we’re unveiling those products and services moment to moment, month to month as we see what the signals are from the customers on what they need next. But we’re seeing the gamut here, and it’s, as you saw, high engagement at 10,000 accounts created every single day and the absolute tonnage of content creation – you know, it’s larger than our core content business, so we’re excited.

Nat Schindler: Great, thank you.

Operator: Thank you. I’m showing no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to Paul Hennessy for any closing remarks.

Paul Hennessy: Great. We just want to express our gratitude to our customers, our contributors and our employees, and for those of you on the call, thanks for joining us. That ends our call for today. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.