Stability AI Wins Landmark UK Court Battle Against Getty Images in AI Copyright Case

Stability AI largely wins UK court battle against Getty Images over copyright and trademark

LONDON (AP) -- Artificial intelligence company Stability AI mostly prevailed against Getty Images Tuesday in a British court battle over intellectual property. Seattle-based Getty Images, which owns an extensive online library of images and video, had filed suit against Stability AI in a widely watched case that went to trial at Britain's High Court in June. The case was among a wave of lawsuits filed by movie studios, authors and artists challenging tech companies' use of their works to train AI chatbots. According to a judge's ruling released Tuesday, Getty narrowly won its argument that Stability had infringed its trademark, but lost its claim for secondary infringement of copyright. Both sides claimed victory. "This is a significant win for intellectual property owners," Getty Images said in a statement. Shares of Getty dipped 3% before the opening bell in the U.S. Stability said it was pleased with the ruling. "This final ruling ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue," Stability General Counsel Christian Dowell said. Getty argued that the development of Stability's AI image maker, called Stable Diffusion, was a "brazen infringement" of its library of images "on a staggering scale." While Getty accused Stability of infringing both its copyright and trademark, the company dropped its primary copyright allegations during the trial, indicating that it didn't think its arguments would succeed. Getty also sued for trademark infringement because its watermark appeared on some of the images generated by Stability's chatbot. Justice Joanna Smith said in her ruling that Getty's trademark claims "succeed (in part)" but that her findings are "both historic and extremely limited in scope." Stability argued that the case doesn't belong in the United Kingdom because the AI model's training technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. It also argued that "only a tiny proportion" of the random outputs of its AI image-generator "look at all similar" to Getty's works. Tech companies have long argued that "fair use" or "fair dealing" legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Getty is also still pursuing a claim of "secondary infringement" of copyright, saying that even if Stability's AI training happened outside the U.K., offering the Stable Diffusion service to British users amounted to importing unlawful copies of its images into the country. Smith dismissed Getty's argument, saying that Stable Diffusion's AI didn't infringe copyright because it doesn't store "store or reproduce any Copyright Works (and has never done so)." Getty is also pursuing a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States against Stability. It originally sued Getty in 2023 but refiled the case in a San Francisco federal court in August. The Getty lawsuits are among a slew of cases that highlight how the generative AI boom is fueling a clash between tech companies and creative industries. Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot. Separately, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from a group of 13 authors who made similar accusations against Facebook owner Meta Platforms in training its AI system Llama. Warner Bros. has sued Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging that its image generator enables subscribers to create AI-generated images and videos of copyrighted characters like Superman and Bugs Bunny. Disney and Universal also sued Midjourney earlier in a separate, joint copyright lawsuit, alleging the San Francisco-based startup pirated the libraries to generate and distribute unauthorized copies of famed characters like Darth Vader and the Minions. ___ AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien contributed to this report.

AI firm wins high court ruling after photo agency's copyright claim

Ruling in case brought by Getty Images against Stability AI is seen as a blow to copyright owners A London-based artificial intelligence firm has won a landmark high court case examining the legality of AI models using vast troves of copyrighted data without permission. Stability AI, whose directors include the Oscar-winning film-maker behind Avatar, James Cameron, successfully resisted a claim from Getty Images that it had infringed the international photo agency's copyright. The ruling is seen as a blow to copyright owners' exclusive right to reap the rewards of their work, with one senior lawyer, Rebecca Newman, a legal director at Addleshaw Goddard, warning it means "the UK's secondary copyright regime is not strong enough to protect its creators". There was evidence that Getty's images were used to train Stability's model, which allows users to generate images with text prompts. Stability was also found to have infringed Getty's trademarks in some cases. The judge, Mrs Justice Joanna Smith, said the question of where to strike the balance between the interests of the creative industries on one side and the AI industry on the other was "of very real societal importance". But she was only able to rule on relatively narrow claims after Getty had to withdraw parts of its case during the trial this summer. Getty Images sued Stability AI for infringement of its intellectual property, alleging the AI company was "completely indifferent to what they fed into the training data" and scraped and copied millions of its images. It had to drop its original copyright claim as there was no evidence the training took place in the UK. But it continued with its suit claiming Stability was still using within its systems copies of its visual assets, which it called the "lifeblood" of its business. It claimed Stability AI had infringed its trademarks because some AI-generated images included Getty watermarks, and that it was guilty of "passing off". In a sign of the complexity of AI copyright cases, it essentially argued that Stability's image-generation model, called Stable Diffusion, amounted to an infringing copy because its making would have constituted copyright infringement had it been carried out in the UK. The judge ruled: "An AI model such as Stable Diffusion which does not store or reproduce any copyright works (and has never done so) is not an 'infringing copy'." She declined to rule on the passing off claim and ruled in favour of some of Getty's claims about trademark infringement related to watermarks. In a statement, Getty Images said: "We remain deeply concerned that even well-resourced companies such as Getty Images face significant challenges in protecting their creative works given the lack of transparency requirements. We invested millions of pounds to reach this point with only one provider that we need to continue to pursue in another venue. "We urge governments, including the UK, to establish stronger transparency rules, which are essential to prevent costly legal battles and to allow creators to protect their rights." Christian Dowell, the general counsel for Stability AI, said: "We are pleased with the court's ruling on the remaining claims in this case. Getty's decision to voluntarily dismiss most of its copyright claims at the conclusion of trial testimony left only a subset of claims before the court, and this final ruling ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue. We are grateful for the time and effort the court has put forth to resolve the important questions in this case." The judgment comes amid a row over how the Labour government should legislate on the issue of copyright and AI, with artists and authors including Elton John, Kate Bush, Dua Lipa and Kazuo Ishiguro lobbying for protection. Meanwhile, tech companies are calling for wide access to copyrighted content to allow them to build the most powerful and effective generative AI systems. The government is consulting on copyright and AI and has said: "Uncertainty over how our copyright framework operates is holding back growth for our AI and creative industries. That cannot continue." It is looking at whether to introduce a "text and data mining exception" into UK copyright law, which would allow copyright works to be used to train AI models in the UK unless the rights holder opts their works out of such training, said lawyers at Mishcon de Reya who have been following the issue.

Stability AI largely wins court battle against Getty Images over copyright, trademark

LONDON -- Artificial intelligence company Stability AI mostly prevailed against Getty Images Tuesday in a British court battle over intellectual property. Seattle-based Getty Images, which owns an extensive online library of images and video, had filed suit against Stability AI in a widely watched case that went to trial at Britain's High Court in June. The case was among a wave of lawsuits filed by movie studios, authors and artists challenging tech companies' use of their works to train AI chatbots. According to a judge's ruling released Tuesday, Getty narrowly won its argument that Stability had infringed its trademark, but lost its claim for secondary infringement of copyright. Both sides claimed victory. "This is a significant win for intellectual property owners," Getty Images said in a statement. Shares of Getty dipped 3% before the opening bell in the U.S. Stability said it was pleased with the ruling. "This final ruling ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue," Stability General Counsel Christian Dowell said. Getty argued that the development of Stability's AI image maker, called Stable Diffusion, was a "brazen infringement" of its library of images "on a staggering scale." While Getty accused Stability of infringing both its copyright and trademark, the company dropped its primary copyright allegations during the trial, indicating that it didn't think its arguments would succeed. Getty also sued for trademark infringement because its watermark appeared on some of the images generated by Stability's chatbot. Justice Joanna Smith said in her ruling that Getty's trademark claims "succeed (in part)" but that her findings are "both historic and extremely limited in scope." Stability argued that the case doesn't belong in the United Kingdom because the AI model's training technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. It also argued that "only a tiny proportion" of the random outputs of its AI image-generator "look at all similar" to Getty's works. Tech companies have long argued that "fair use" or "fair dealing" legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Getty is also still pursuing a claim of "secondary infringement" of copyright, saying that even if Stability's AI training happened outside the U.K., offering the Stable Diffusion service to British users amounted to importing unlawful copies of its images into the country. Smith dismissed Getty's argument, saying that Stable Diffusion's AI didn't infringe copyright because it doesn't store "store or reproduce any Copyright Works (and has never done so)." Getty is also pursuing a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States against Stability. It originally sued Getty in 2023 but refiled the case in a San Francisco federal court in August. The Getty lawsuits are among a slew of cases that highlight how the generative AI boom is fueling a clash between tech companies and creative industries. Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot. Separately, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from a group of 13 authors who made similar accusations against Facebook owner Meta Platforms in training its AI system Llama. Warner Bros. has sued Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging that its image generator enables subscribers to create AI-generated images and videos of copyrighted characters like Superman and Bugs Bunny. Disney and Universal also sued Midjourney earlier in a separate, joint copyright lawsuit, alleging the San Francisco-based startup pirated the libraries to generate and distribute unauthorized copies of famed characters like Darth Vader and the Minions. ___ AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien contributed to this report.

Stability AI largely wins UK court battle against Getty Images over copyright and trademark

LONDON (AP) -- Artificial intelligence company Stability AI mostly prevailed against Getty Images Tuesday in a British court battle over intellectual property. Seattle-based Getty Images, which owns an extensive online library of images and video, had filed suit against Stability AI in a widely watched case that went to trial at Britain's High Court in June. The case was among a wave of lawsuits filed by movie studios, authors and artists challenging tech companies' use of their works to train AI chatbots. According to a judge's ruling released Tuesday, Getty narrowly won its argument that Stability had infringed its trademark, but lost its claim for secondary infringement of copyright. Both sides claimed victory. "This is a significant win for intellectual property owners," Getty Images said in a statement. Shares of Getty dipped 3% before the opening bell in the U.S. Stability said it was pleased with the ruling. "This final ruling ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue," Stability General Counsel Christian Dowell said. Getty argued that the development of Stability's AI image maker, called Stable Diffusion, was a "brazen infringement" of its library of images "on a staggering scale." While Getty accused Stability of infringing both its copyright and trademark, the company dropped its primary copyright allegations during the trial, indicating that it didn't think its arguments would succeed. Getty also sued for trademark infringement because its watermark appeared on some of the images generated by Stability's chatbot. Justice Joanna Smith said in her ruling that Getty's trademark claims "succeed (in part)" but that her findings are "both historic and extremely limited in scope." Stability argued that the case doesn't belong in the United Kingdom because the AI model's training technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. It also argued that "only a tiny proportion" of the random outputs of its AI image-generator "look at all similar" to Getty's works. Tech companies have long argued that "fair use" or "fair dealing" legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Getty is also still pursuing a claim of "secondary infringement" of copyright, saying that even if Stability's AI training happened outside the U.K., offering the Stable Diffusion service to British users amounted to importing unlawful copies of its images into the country. Smith dismissed Getty's argument, saying that Stable Diffusion's AI didn't infringe copyright because it doesn't store "store or reproduce any Copyright Works (and has never done so)." Getty is also pursuing a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States against Stability. It originally sued Getty in 2023 but refiled the case in a San Francisco federal court in August. The Getty lawsuits are among a slew of cases that highlight how the generative AI boom is fueling a clash between tech companies and creative industries. Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot. Separately, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from a group of 13 authors who made similar accusations against Facebook owner Meta Platforms in training its AI system Llama. Warner Bros. has sued Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging that its image generator enables subscribers to create AI-generated images and videos of copyrighted characters like Superman and Bugs Bunny. Disney and Universal also sued Midjourney earlier in a separate, joint copyright lawsuit, alleging the San Francisco-based startup pirated the libraries to generate and distribute unauthorized copies of famed characters like Darth Vader and the Minions. ___ AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien contributed to this report.

Stability AI Largely Wins UK Court Battle Against Getty Images Over Copyright and Trademark

LONDON (AP) -- Artificial intelligence company Stability AI mostly prevailed against Getty Images Tuesday in a British court battle over intellectual property. Seattle-based Getty Images, which owns an extensive online library of images and video, had filed suit against Stability AI in a widely watched case that went to trial at Britain's High Court in June. The case was among a wave of lawsuits filed by movie studios, authors and artists challenging tech companies' use of their works to train AI chatbots. According to a judge's ruling released Tuesday, Getty narrowly won its argument that Stability had infringed its trademark, but lost its claim for secondary infringement of copyright. Both sides claimed victory. "This is a significant win for intellectual property owners," Getty Images said in a statement. Shares of Getty dipped 3% before the opening bell in the U.S. Stability said it was pleased with the ruling. "This final ruling ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue," Stability General Counsel Christian Dowell said. Getty argued that the development of Stability's AI image maker, called Stable Diffusion, was a "brazen infringement" of its library of images "on a staggering scale." While Getty accused Stability of infringing both its copyright and trademark, the company dropped its primary copyright allegations during the trial, indicating that it didn't think its arguments would succeed. Getty also sued for trademark infringement because its watermark appeared on some of the images generated by Stability's chatbot. Justice Joanna Smith said in her ruling that Getty's trademark claims "succeed (in part)" but that her findings are "both historic and extremely limited in scope." Stability argued that the case doesn't belong in the United Kingdom because the AI model's training technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. It also argued that "only a tiny proportion" of the random outputs of its AI image-generator "look at all similar" to Getty's works. Tech companies have long argued that "fair use" or "fair dealing" legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Getty is also still pursuing a claim of "secondary infringement" of copyright, saying that even if Stability's AI training happened outside the U.K., offering the Stable Diffusion service to British users amounted to importing unlawful copies of its images into the country. Smith dismissed Getty's argument, saying that Stable Diffusion's AI didn't infringe copyright because it doesn't store "store or reproduce any Copyright Works (and has never done so)." Getty is also pursuing a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States against Stability. It originally sued Getty in 2023 but refiled the case in a San Francisco federal court in August. The Getty lawsuits are among a slew of cases that highlight how the generative AI boom is fueling a clash between tech companies and creative industries. Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot. Separately, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from a group of 13 authors who made similar accusations against Facebook owner Meta Platforms in training its AI system Llama. Warner Bros. has sued Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging that its image generator enables subscribers to create AI-generated images and videos of copyrighted characters like Superman and Bugs Bunny. Disney and Universal also sued Midjourney earlier in a separate, joint copyright lawsuit, alleging the San Francisco-based startup pirated the libraries to generate and distribute unauthorized copies of famed characters like Darth Vader and the Minions. ___ AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien contributed to this report.

Getty Images largely loses landmark UK lawsuit over AI image generator

Getty Images largely lost its copyright lawsuit against Stability AI over its image generator. While Getty partially succeeded on trademark infringement, the court dismissed its secondary copyright infringement claim. The ruling's scope is considered limited due to evidence gaps regarding AI training data. Getty Images largely lost its landmark lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Stability AI over its image generator at London's High Court on Tuesday. Seattle-based Getty, which produces editorial content and creative stock images and video, accused Stability AI of using its images to "train" its Stable Diffusion system, which can generate images from text inputs. The company had sued Stability AI for breach of copyright on the grounds Stable Diffusion was trained using Getty's images, and that images generated by Stable Diffusion reproduced its copyrighted images. But Getty dropped that part of its case mid-trial, partly due to a lack of evidence about where Stable Diffusion was "trained", which intellectual property lawyers said could limit the wider significance of Tuesday's ruling for the law on AI. Getty's claims of trademark infringement and for secondary copyright infringement, alleging that Stability AI imported into the United Kingdom an AI model which breached its copyright remained live ahead of the court's decision. Judge Joanna Smith said in a written ruling that Getty had succeeded "in part" on trademark infringement, but that her findings were "both historic and extremely limited in scope". She also dismissed Getty's secondary copyright infringement claim. The company's shares were seen down 6.6% in premarket trading following the ruling. (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)

Stability AI largely wins U.K. court battle against Getty Images over copyright and trademark

LONDON -- Artificial intelligence company Stability AI mostly prevailed against Getty Images Tuesday in a British court battle over intellectual property. Seattle-based Getty Images, which owns an extensive online library of images and video, had filed suit against Stability AI in a widely watched case that went to trial at Britain's High Court in June. The case was among a wave of lawsuits filed by movie studios, authors and artists challenging tech companies' use of their works to train AI chatbots. According to a judge's ruling released Tuesday, Getty narrowly won its argument that Stability had infringed its trademark, but lost its claim for secondary infringement of copyright. Both sides claimed victory. "This is a significant win for intellectual property owners," Getty Images said in a statement. Shares of Getty dipped three per cent before the opening bell in the U.S. Stability said it was pleased with the ruling. "This final ruling ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue," Stability General Counsel Christian Dowell said. Getty argued that the development of Stability's AI image maker, called Stable Diffusion, was a "brazen infringement" of its library of images "on a staggering scale." While Getty accused Stability of infringing both its copyright and trademark, the company dropped its primary copyright allegations during the trial, indicating that it didn't think its arguments would succeed. Getty also sued for trademark infringement because its watermark appeared on some of the images generated by Stability's chatbot. Justice Joanna Smith said in her ruling that Getty's trademark claims "succeed (in part)" but that her findings are "both historic and extremely limited in scope." Stability argued that the case doesn't belong in the United Kingdom because the AI model's training technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. It also argued that "only a tiny proportion" of the random outputs of its AI image-generator "look at all similar" to Getty's works. Tech companies have long argued that "fair use" or "fair dealing" legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Getty is also still pursuing a claim of "secondary infringement" of copyright, saying that even if Stability's AI training happened outside the U.K., offering the Stable Diffusion service to British users amounted to importing unlawful copies of its images into the country. Smith dismissed Getty's argument, saying that Stable Diffusion's AI didn't infringe copyright because it doesn't store "store or reproduce any Copyright Works (and has never done so)." Getty is also pursuing a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States against Stability. It originally sued Getty in 2023 but refiled the case in a San Francisco federal court in August. The Getty lawsuits are among a slew of cases that highlight how the generative AI boom is fueling a clash between tech companies and creative industries. Anthropic agreed to pay US$1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot. Separately, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from a group of 13 authors who made similar accusations against Facebook owner Meta Platforms in training its AI system Llama. Warner Bros. has sued Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging that its image generator enables subscribers to create AI-generated images and videos of copyrighted characters like Superman and Bugs Bunny. Disney and Universal also sued Midjourney earlier in a separate, joint copyright lawsuit, alleging the San Francisco-based startup pirated the libraries to generate and distribute unauthorized copies of famed characters like Darth Vader and the Minions.

Getty Images largely loses landmark UK lawsuit over AI image generator

LONDON (Reuters) -Getty Images largely lost its landmark lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Stability AI over its image generator at London's High Court on Tuesday. Seattle-based Getty, which produces editorial content and creative stock images and video, accused Stability AI of using its images to "train" its Stable Diffusion system, which can generate images from text inputs. The company had sued Stability AI for breach of copyright on the grounds Stable Diffusion was trained using Getty's images, and that images generated by Stable Diffusion reproduced its copyrighted images. But Getty dropped that part of its case mid-trial, partly due to a lack of evidence about where Stable Diffusion was "trained", which intellectual property lawyers said could limit the wider significance of Tuesday's ruling for the law on AI. Getty's claims of trademark infringement and for secondary copyright infringement, alleging that Stability AI imported into the United Kingdom an AI model which breached its copyright remained live ahead of the court's decision. Judge Joanna Smith said in a written ruling that Getty had succeeded "in part" on trademark infringement, but that her findings were "both historic and extremely limited in scope". She also dismissed Getty's secondary copyright infringement claim. The company's shares were seen down 6.6% in premarket trading following the ruling.