Getty Images, a stock image and media content provider, announced a lawsuit against Stability AI, the developers of the text-to-image deep learning model Stable Diffusion, for illegally copying and processing millions of images protected by copyright.
“It is Getty Images’ position that Stability AI unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright and the associated metadata owned or represented by Getty Images absent a license to benefit Stability AI’s commercial interests and to the detriment of the content creators,” the Getty said in a statement.
Getty Images added that, while it does grant licenses to tech companies that respect intellectual property rights, Stability AI does not fall into this category. Getty Images claims that Stable Diffusion violated UK copyright law by scraping the internet for images to use in its training data, which the platform uses to generate AI-generated images.
Craig Peters, CEO of Getty Images, stated that Stability AI’s use of Getty Images work was not acceptable, because “it is not supported by the law, and we believe content owners should have a say in how their work is used”. “This is not a statement against generative models,” he said. “Instead, we believe it is a responsible and legal path to produce such models.”
A representative for Stability AI told BBC News that the company took these concerns seriously but added: “It is unusual that we learned about this planned legal action through the press. We are still waiting for any documents to be served. If we receive them, we will respond appropriately.”
The lawsuit has raised concerns about whether AI art falls under fair use, as well as the legality and ethics of image generators.
The sources for this piece include an article in BBC.