A landmark legal battle has begun in the UK High Court that could redefine the boundaries between copyright law and artificial intelligence innovation.
Stability AI, the London-based company behind the popular image generator Stable Diffusion, has warned that Getty Images’ copyright and trademark lawsuit poses “an overt threat” to the future of the generative AI industry.
Getty Images, one of the world’s largest and most influential photography agencies, alleges that Stability illegally used its vast database of copyrighted photographs to train its AI model — a claim the tech firm vehemently denies. At the heart of the case is the allegation that Stability’s technology outputs images that still bear Getty’s watermark, leading the agency to describe the result as tantamount to “sticking our trademark on pornography” and “AI rubbish”.
Lawyers for Getty argue that this is not a fight between art and innovation, but one about fair payment and responsible technology development. “The problem is when AI companies such as Stability want to use those works without payment,” said Lindsay Lane KC, representing Getty. “This was a bunch of tech geeks who were so excited by AI that they were indifferent to any of the dangers or problems it presents.”
Stability AI, whose board includes film director James Cameron, hit back by claiming Getty is using “fanciful” legal arguments and spending upwards of £10 million in an attempt to derail a technology it perceives as an existential threat to its own business model. The company also strongly rejected Getty’s separate allegation that it had trained on databases containing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), calling the claim “repugnant” and insisting it has robust safeguards in place to prevent abuse.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.
