stock photo

noun

plural stock photos

: a photographic image of a generic subject (such as a person, object, or location) that is kept for later use

Prevailing wisdom among dealers is that online shoppers prefer real photos of new vehicles in inventory over stock photos from the manufacturer and others.

—David Barkholz

[Suzanne] Rodriguez has more than a decade of experience in digital advertising and professional photography. Stock photos often can be found on the websites of small businesses, but custom photos provide a more accurate characterization of the firm, she said.

—Kevin Oklobzija

When the National Enquirer needed a close-up photo of a snail for one of its … stories, it didn't send a phalanx of photographers out into the garden with cameras in hand. Instead, it called on a small stock photo service in Chatham that specializes in pictures of animals and nature …

—Michael Farrell

Examples of stock photo in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The majority of the profile images appeared to be stock photos, and the job titles were all facetious. —Caroline Haskins, WIRED, 25 Mar. 2024

Adobe, the owner of Photoshop, has positioned itself as a leader in reining in AI content, but its own stock photo website was recently full of fake images of the war in Gaza. —Gerrit De Vynck, Washington Post, 13 Feb. 2024

This is the stock photo from KLOV/VAPS and was one of the few images of the pneumatic machine available during my initial research. —Vincent Pureza, Ars Technica, 30 Mar. 2023

For example, the stock photo site Shutterstock has a partnership to provide training data for OpenAI. —Nitasha Tiku, Washington Post, 20 Oct. 2023

The account’s profile picture appears to be a stock photo used across a number of international business websites — and the handful of tweets from Shepherd’s account are all directed at critics. —Cheyenne Roundtree, Rolling Stone, 1 Nov. 2023

Learn more › Stop wasting time sourcing stock photos. —Stack Commerce, Popular Science, 17 Aug. 2023

The profiles listed for its chief commercial officer Ray Kwong and an executive sales representative Johnny Rico featured stock photos and employment histories that couldn’t be verified by any of their purported former employers. —Bypaolo Confino, Fortune, 22 Sep. 2023

Billions of dollars are being funneled into AI companies, much of it in service of corporate profits: writing emails more quickly, creating stock photos more efficiently, delivering ads more effectively. —Camille Bromley, WIRED, 29 Aug. 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1912, in the meaning defined above