AI is eating everything, but Shutterstock and OnlyFans feel fit in totally different ways
One day, you’re the default solution. Rock-solid, unstoppable, untouchable. Then generative AI shows up and your business model springs leaks everywhere. For Shutterstock, AI threatens to replace its vast photo library with “type-a-prompt” custom art.
For OnlyFans, the dagger is sharper: fans pay precisely because they believe a real, breathing human is on the other side of the paywall. If deep-fake faces flood the platform, subscribers will demand airtight proof of authenticity —watermarks, live-liveness checks, government-ID badges—before they hand over another dollar.
Shutterstock’s Gut Punch. AI was immediately a substitute
Old playbook: Designers and marketers needed “professional” imagery in a pinch, so they paid subscription fees to rifle through huge stock libraries. Upload, license, and cash the royalty.
New reality: Type “cyberpunk pug wearing steampunk goggles, shot at golden hour” into Midjourney and wait 15 seconds. The machine spits out a custom image that’s cheaper and more on-brand than 99 % of “close-enough” stock shots.
- Cost: Near-free after a small AI subscription.
- Custom: Perfectly tailored visuals in one prompt.
- Original: No awkward “I’ve seen that stock pic before” moments.
Shutterstock is scrambling to stay relevant:
- Licensing its entire archive to train everybody else’s models.
- Shipping an in-house “generate with AI” tool.
- Marketing itself as the legal safe harbor for copyright-clean images.
Even so… its struggling. People needing stock don’t care greatly about how the image was created, they care how relevant it is and a library of images even 500 million in size, will struggle to have as much relevant imagery as an AI with an unlimited creation capacity.
OnlyFans’ Nightmare. AI is just too real for comfort.
Subscribers generally seek an online connection with an authentic human, but generative video can now face-swap, body-reshape and pump out endless “new models” overnight. The obvious fallout: fans think, “Is she even real?” and fan’s faith in OnlyFans as a genuine experience will plummet.
- Deep-fake pages already siphon cash from unsuspecting users.
- Legal heat: the Take It Down Act (2025) adds heavy fines for hosting non-consensual AI porn.
- OnlyFans must pivot from a pure hosting site into the web’s largest deep-fake detective.
Same Technology, Opposite Nightmares
| Factor | Shutterstock | OnlyFans |
|---|---|---|
| User’s core need | Any image, fast | A real person, intimate |
| Main AI threat | Cheaper, custom images replace the catalog | Cheap, convincing fakes poison trust |
| Biggest business risk | Commoditisation & price collapse | User scepticism & legal exposure |
| Survival playbook | Become the generator + sell “clean licenses” |
Become the authenticity police: ID badges, live checks, deep-fake filters |
The Take-Home Message for OnlyFans
Take the opposite approach to Shutterstock. Shutterstock has had to lean into AI, but OnlyFans must wall it off. OnlyFans’ core value is real-human intimacy, so the platform must arm fans with “trust tech” that instantly flags AI fakery.
Beyond mandatory creator ID-verification, OnlyFans can roll out:
- Embedded authenticity watermarks – invisible digital signatures baked into every frame at upload; fans click a browser plug-in to see a green “Human-Captured” badge.
- Live-liveness clips – a 5-second selfie video where creators blink and read a random phrase; clips are hashed on-chain once per week so subscribers can verify recency.
- Real-time EXIF stamps – server-side tags that log camera type, GPS fuzzed to 1 km, and timestamp; machine-generated media lacks this triad and triggers a warning banner.
- Reverse-image auto-scan – AI that fingerprints every new upload and crawls the web; if the same face appears on a deep-fake forum, the post is quarantined before going live.
- Subscriber “truth meter” overlay – a simple traffic-light icon (green = fully verified, amber = pending, red = AI detected) shown on profile thumbnails and pay-per-view previews.
- Creator transparency score – a public metric that rises when a model does unscripted livestreams, holds today’s newspaper, or passes surprise liveness prompts; falls if uploads fail integrity checks.
Time will tell what they do. Right now, the mutterings from unhappy fans are somewhat muted, but as they grow, OnlyFans will have to react
(PS – the image on this post was shamelessly AI-created)