Getty Images largely loses landmark UK lawsuit over AI image generator
(Corrected to remove reference to higher pre-market traded shares in paragraph 10)
LONDON (Reuters) -Getty Images largely loses landmark case against itself artificial intelligence company Stability AI over its image generator in London’s High Court on Tuesday.
Seattle-based Getty, which produces editorial content and creative stock images and videos, 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 copyright infringement, on the grounds that Stable Diffusion was trained using images from Getty and that the images created by Stable Diffusion reproduced copyrighted images.
However, Getty dropped this part of his case mid-trial, in part due to a lack of evidence as to where Stable Diffusion was “trained”; This could limit the broader significance of Tuesday’s decision on artificial intelligence legislation, intellectual property lawyers said.
Getty’s claims for trademark infringement and secondary copyright infringement remained in play ahead of the court ruling, alleging that Stability AI had imported a copyright-infringing AI model into the UK.
Judge Joanna Smith said in a written decision that Getty was “partially” successful on trademark infringement related to Getty watermarks created by Stable Diffusion users, but that its findings were “extremely limited in both history and scope.”
He denied Getty’s claim of secondary copyright infringement.
Getty Images said in a statement that the decision “confirms that Stable Diffusion’s inclusion of Getty Images’ trademarks in AI-generated output infringes those trademarks.”
The statement said the decision “sets a strong precedent that intangible articles, such as artificial intelligence models, are subject to copyright infringement claims in the same way as tangible articles,” and Getty said it would use this in a parallel lawsuit against Stability AI in the United States.
The company’s shares were down 3.6% in premarket trading on the NYSE as of 11:40 a.m. ET.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; editing by Sarah Young, Alexandra Hudson)
