It’s a busy week for the lawyers representing creative AI firm Stability AI, to say the least. Yesterday we reported on a class-action lawsuit filed by three visual artists against the company, along with Midjourney and DeviantArt, alleging that their text-to-image systems were “trained on vast amounts of copyrighted work with no consent, no credit, and no compensation”.
Now Stability AI is facing legal action on another front, from Getty Images. “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,” announced Getty.
It added that Getty Images *does* have licensing deals with some technology companies for training their AIs in this way. “Stability AI did not seek any such license from Getty Images and instead, we believe, chose to ignore viable licensing options and long‑standing legal protections in pursuit of their stand‑alone commercial interests.”
Stability AI has yet to comment publicly.
As we wrote yesterday, music rightsholders will be watching closely, as they too have concerns about their catalogues being used to train AIs without licensing deals.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…