UK Court Delivers Split Verdict in Getty Images vs. Stability AI Case

In January 2023, Getty Images filed a major lawsuit in the UK High Court against Stability AI, an artificial intelligence company which develops and releases open-source generative AI models, most famously the Stable Diffusion text-to-image model.

In the lawsuit, Getty alleged that Stability AI used millions of its copyrighted photographs and associated metadata without permission to train the generative model Stable Diffusion. Getty further claimed that the AI model’s outputs sometimes reproduced Getty’s content (or substantial parts thereof) and that those outputs included Getty’s watermark or trademarks.

Additional claims included trademark infringement (use of Getty/iStock marks), database rights infringement, and “passing off” (i.e., the suggestion that AI‐generated images were endorsed by or created by Getty).

Simply put, Getty’s lawsuit aimed to hold Stability accountable for how its model was trained, what output it produced and how that related to its intellectual property.

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