2. Data Scarcity and Access Issues

• Increasing costs: Companies like Shutterstock are charging tens of millions for AI companies to access their archives.
• Data restrictions: Many websites are nOW blocking AI web scrapers (e.g., over 35% of tOP 1,000 websites block OpenAI's scraper).
• Quality data scarcity: Around 25% of data from "high-quality" sources has been restricted from major AI training datasets.
• Future projections: Some researchers (e.g., Epoch AI) predict that developers may run out of accessible training data between 2026 and 2032 if current trends continue.