The first major copyright trial of the generative AI industry has begun in London.
Getty Images versus Stability AI is a courtroom battle that could decide the future relationship between copyright holders and generative AI firms.
Getty claims that Stability AI, while developing its image maker Stable Diffusion, took part in ‘brazen infringement’ of Getty’s image collection ‘on a staggering scale’.
‘What Stability did was inappropriate,’ said Getty CEO Craig Peters in 2023.
He said copyright holders, creators and owners of intellectual property should grant permission to any AI firm that wishes to use their works to train their models.
‘The problem is when AI companies like Stability AI want to use those works without payment,’ says, Lindsay Lane, Getty’s trial lawyer.
This trial is about ‘straightforward enforcement of intellectual property rights’, including copyright, trademark and database rights.
Lanes says Getty Images ‘recognises that the AI industry is a force for good but that doesn’t justify those developing AI models to ride roughshod over intellectual property rights’.
Stability AI has a completely different view.
Lawyers for the AI image maker argue that Getty’s claims ‘represent an overt threat to Stability’s entire business, and the wider generative AI industry’ and that ‘only a tiny proportion’ of the outputs of its AI image-generator ‘look at all similar’ to images stored on Getty’s databases.
Stephen Conmy, editorial director of Contenseo, says the trial is very significant. ‘The AI developers want copyright exemptions to train their AI models, which remains unlikely to happen. However, the decision of the trial judge will strengthen the hand of either side in the ongoing, worldwide legal battles between copyright holders and AI developers.’
Interesting fact
Sean Parker, former president of Facebook, is chair of Stability’s board and a significant investor in the company. Parker is very familiar with copyright violation court cases, having been the co-founder of the music streaming site Napster, which was sued by Metallica over copyright violations.
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