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Stability AI which is the creator of the art generation tool stability AI is being sued over alleged copyright violation for using other peoples content to allow its systems to function. Getty images has commenced legal action in the High Court of Justice in London against Stability AI.
Getty explained that Stability AI unlawfully copied and processed millions of copyright protected images without to license to benefit Stability AI’s commercial interests which caused detriment to the content owners. The company stability AI made no outreach to Getty Images to utilise their contributors material so Getty is taking action to protect their contributors IP rights.
Stability AI has been bombarded with numerous lawsuits over copyright infringement claims for the reason that Stability AI is using their content without consent, credit or compensation. Stability AI argues that such functions of their AI falls under the fair dealing doctrine. However, Getty Images counterargues that an independent analysis of Stability AI’s found that a large portion came from Getty Images and other stock images sites. Additionally, the AI also recreates Getty’s watermark in its generated images.
The CEO of Getty Images explained that Getty is not interested in financial compensation or preventing the development of the AI’s but hopes to finding ways of constructing a standard that respects intellectual property rights. Stability AI says in the next update to Stable Diffusion it will allow artists to opt out of having their work included in training data sets but this may not be enough to satisfy the needs of original content creators and companies like Getty Images. Additionally, it was revealed a California based artists private medical record photos taken in 2013 were part of the dataset Getty Images used which emerges the question of what other private images Getty have in their datasets. The Court is yet to determine the outcome of this case and maybe rule in a way which at least allows original creators to at least be acknowledged.
Written by Zohaib Tahir an LLM student at Solent University
