Getty Images is suing the creators of AI art tool Stable Diffusion for scraping its content

[icymist]

Getty Images is suing Stability AI, creators of popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, over alleged copyright violation.

In a press statement shared with The Verge, the stock photo company said it believes that Stability AI “unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright” to train its software and that Getty Images has “commenced legal proceedings in the High Court of Justice in London” against the firm.

Getty Images CEO Craig Peters told The Verge in an interview that the company has issued Stability AI with a “letter before action” — a formal notification of impending litigation in the UK. (The company did not say whether legal proceedings would take place in the US, too.)

[...] The lawsuit marks an escalation in the developing legal battle between AI firms and content creators for credit, profit, and the future direction of the creative industries. AI art tools like Stable Diffusion rely on human-created images for training data, which companies scrape from the web, often without their creators’ knowledge or consent. AI firms claim this practice is covered by laws like the US fair use doctrine, but many rights holders disagree and say it constitutes copyright violation. Legal experts are divided on the issue but agree that such questions will have to be decided for certain in the courts. (This past weekend, a trio of artists launched the first major lawsuit against AI firms, including Stability AI itself.)

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/17/23558516/ai-art-copyright-stable-diffusion-getty-images-lawsuit

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Well! This should be interesting.

[LunaSea]

1. Not the only suit

Three artists are starting a class-action lawsuit against Stability.ai, Midjourney, and DeviantArt alleging direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, DMCA violations, publicity rights violation, and unfair competition. DeviantArt appears to be included as punishment for “betrayal of its artist community. Specifically with regards to the copyright claims, the lawsuit alleges that Stability.ai and Midjourney have scraped the Internet to copy billions of works without permission, including works belonging to the claimants. They allege that these works are then stored by the defendants, and these copies are then used to produce derivative works.

https://www.technollama.co.uk/artists-file-class-action-lawsuit-against-stability-ai-deviantart-and-midjourney

https://stablediffusionlitigation.com/pdf/00201/1-1-stable-diffusion-complaint.pdf

[lapfog_1]

2. reminds me of the funniest story arc on HBOs "Silicon Valley" (small spoiler)

where incubator resident Jian Yang wants to create a web site for his grandmother's seafood recipes... but incubator owner Erlich Bachman accidentally sells the idea as "see food"... a phone app that is AI driven to detect what food you are about to eat (calories, nutrition information, etc). Erlich gets some seed funding and Jian goes off to create the AI... but at the due date for the VCs, the AI can only recognize hot dogs ("hot dog" v. "not hot dog&quot . Erlich is so pissed that he sticks his phone into his pants and snaps a dick pick ("Hot dog!!!&quot amd gives up his share of Yang's company.

Jian Yang gets the last laugh when he sells his "dick pic" recognition AI to some web company for millions of dollars!

I literally laughed my ass off.

[intrepidity]

6. I wish that show had not ended

It was so brilliant.

Jared locked in a Tesla, taken to that manmade island. I don't recall all the specifics, but it was hilarious.

[lapfog_1]

7. fucking billionaires

tag line to that and most episodes

Years ago I did my own silicon valley startup and invented some similar software to the compression software at the heart of Silicon Valley and Richard... some of you may have heard of "dedupe" (not my term for it). I have 5 patents on it from the 1990s. Sold my startup to a larger corp who ended up not building a product but filing lawsuits against most of the Silicon Valley data storage companies that used similar software... and they made 100s of millions from it. I didn't make nearly that much.

Anyway I did the "Sand Hill Road" shuffle more than a few times... and was an EIR for one fund for a few months. I have many stories about doing a high tech startup... some of which are mirrored in the show. Others I heard about first or second hand.

That show was really closer to the truth than many people realize.

[LunaSea]

3. More

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/generative-ai-andy-warhol-fair-use-lead-2023-copyright-issues

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/wild-west-of-generative-ai-raises-novel-copyright-questions

[intheflow]

4. Fair use doctrine would be a no-go in the US.

It can any be used for nonprofit or educational purposes. Of course, US copyright laws are the among most stringent in the world, but who knows how it will play in Britain. I think the AI creators will argue they used the images to “educate” the AI, but that is also a fail because educate is for living instruction. When AI learns, it’s training algorithms which is not the same thing at all.

[LunaSea]

5. More details

Midjourney founder David Holz has admitted that his company did not receive consent for the hundreds of millions of images used to train its AI image generator, outraging photogarphers and artists.


https://petapixel.com/2022/12/21/midjourny-founder-admits-to-using-a-hundred-million-images-without-consent/

[LostOne4Ever]

8. I hope the three Artists and Getty win

And get everything they should have gotten!

Corporations need to quit screwing over artist for their greed!