AI News June 24 2026 - China Blacklists 56 US Firms, Getty-OpenAI ChatGPT Deal, GETY Surges 145%

1. China Retaliates — The AI Export War Goes Bidirectional

China's Ministry of Commerce announced immediate retaliatory measures against 56 US companies following the Pentagon's June 8 expansion of its 1260H list — which added 65 Chinese technology companies including Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, Tencent, and Unitree to its roster of entities believed to have aided Beijing's military, bringing the total to 188 designated entities. China's response came within weeks: 46 American defense and technology companies are banned from participating in Chinese government procurement tenders, and 10 companies were added to China's dual-use export control list.

The targeted US companies span drones (Teal Drones, Jaia Robotics), aerospace (Ball Aerospace and Technologies), maritime defense (L3Harris Maritime Services), and critically, rare earth mining. MP Materials — which operates the only active rare earth mine in the US at Mountain Pass, California, backed by a decade-long Department of Defense contract — is on the list. USA Rare Earth is also targeted. China controls approximately 70% of global rare earth mining and 90% of refining capacity. Targeting America's flagship rare earth independence initiatives is a structural pressure point, not a symbolic gesture.

The context matters for AI specifically. The Fable 5 export control directive on June 12 was the first time the US applied export controls to a deployed commercial AI API — not chips, not hardware, but a live software endpoint. China's retaliation targeted physical supply chains: drones, defense components, rare earths. The two countries are now running parallel export control escalations in different domains — the US in AI models, China in the physical inputs AI requires. As AI Weekly summarised: "Ten days after Washington pulled Anthropic's top models from foreign hands, the bill came due. The export war just stopped being one-directional."

2. Getty Images + OpenAI — Licensed Photos Inside ChatGPT

Getty Images announced a multi-year display partnership with OpenAI on June 21, 2026. Getty Images signed a multi-year display agreement with OpenAI that will bring licensed photos into ChatGPT search and discovery results. GETY stock surged up to 145% on the announcement before settling. The deal reverses Getty's previous hard stance against AI companies — in September 2022, Getty banned all AI-generated art from its library and subsequently sued Stability AI for copyright violations. The Stability AI lawsuit was rejected late last year; the OpenAI deal follows within months.

What the deal actually covers: "High-quality, licensed visual content makes AI-powered search and discovery more useful and more trustworthy," Getty CEO Craig Peters said in a statement. The agreement is specifically for display — Getty's licensed library appearing in ChatGPT search results and discovery experiences. It is not a training deal. Getty hasn't shared any details on whether its images will be used in AI training, although its deal with Perplexity doesn't allow for it. The same restriction is expected to apply here: display rights, not training rights.

What it means for ChatGPT: Users asking questions about news events, historical moments, travel destinations, products, celebrities, and sports will see licensed editorial photography in responses rather than AI-generated stand-ins or no images at all. For the first time, ChatGPT users will see Getty-owned or Getty-represented images in response to queries that call for visual context — with proper attribution and under a licensing framework that addresses the legal and ethical quagmire that has long surrounded AI's use of copyrighted material. OpenAI already uses Shutterstock imagery for DALL-E training; the Getty deal gives ChatGPT a separate lane for displaying real editorial photography in factual search contexts.

The GETY 145% surge: Getty Images was one of the most shorted stocks in the market heading into this announcement — the company's traditional stock photo business has been under pressure from AI-generated imagery eating into demand. The OpenAI deal positions Getty as an infrastructure provider for AI search rather than a victim of it. The surge reflects short covering plus genuine re-rating of the stock. Getty had previously struck a similar display deal with Perplexity AI in October 2025 — this is the same model, applied to ChatGPT's significantly larger audience.

3. Claude Outage Update — Resolved, No Root Cause Published

Yesterday's Claude outage — which hit all models and all platforms simultaneously starting at 14:19 UTC — is confirmed resolved. Anthropic identified a fix within 6 minutes of the initial investigation and the outage lasted approximately 60-90 minutes of meaningful degradation. As of this morning, status.anthropic.com shows all components operational. Anthropic has not yet published a public root cause analysis for the June 23 incident. The company's status page history shows three significant June incidents: the June 12-18 Fable 5 suspension, multiple elevated-error incidents on June 22, and the all-platform outage on June 23. Full detail: Claude outage June 23 — full breakdown ->

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