Getty Images has withdrawn its plan to acquire and merge with Shutterstock in a $3.7 billion deal.

On July 1, IT outlet Engadget reported that UK competition regulators demanded the sale of Shutterstock's global editorial business as a condition for approval. Getty Images' board decided not to accept the condition, effectively derailing the deal.

The merger was announced in January 2025. The companies set out a goal of creating a mega stock image company that could respond to the spread of AI images. The combined company was to be named Getty Images Holdings. At the time, Getty Images CEO Craig Peters (크레이그 피터스) called the deal a merger that would be a "turning point".

Regulatory hurdles rose in the UK. The U.S. Department of Justice granted an unconditional antitrust approval for the deal earlier this year. In May, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority said it would not approve the merger unless Shutterstock sold its global editorial business, including celebrity photos and a news photo agency. The CMA judged that removing competition between the two companies could reduce choice for UK media outlets and raise prices.

Getty Images ultimately rejected the divestment condition. In documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Getty Images said its board unanimously decided to end the merger agreement without proceeding with the process to sell Shutterstock's editorial business. As a result, the deal is moving toward termination unless there is a "material change" in the related situation by July 7.

The case shows that U.S. approval alone is not enough for large content and media deals. UK regulators saw the combination of the two companies' photo and editorial content as something that could directly affect prices and choice for media customers. In particular, editorial images and news photos are an area where demand is concentrated among news organisations, unlike general advertising and marketing stock images, which appears to have contributed to tighter regulation.

The two companies have also recently signed separate deals with OpenAI. This will allow images with the companies' watermarks to appear in ChatGPT search results. Major media sites have not yet adopted AI-generated images as full-fledged substitutes. In that situation, the merger was about more than simply increasing scale, with the key being how broadly the companies could secure original images and editorial content in an AI-competitive environment.

The UK move showed it could become a burden for other large media deals. Even after U.S. Department of Justice approval, decisions by regulators in the UK and other regions can separately determine whether a deal succeeds. As a result, for cross-border combinations of media and content companies, it is expected to become more important to address business overlaps and competition issues by region.