Getty Images is suing the maker of an AI image generation tool for alleged copyright infringement.
On Tuesday, a stock image supplier sued Stability AI in the UK, alleging it illegally copied and processed millions of copyrighted images and associated metadata owned or represented by Getty Images. announced that it would initiate legal proceedings. Basically, Stability AI has been accused of scraping images from the Getty digital library without paying a license fee or compensating the image creators.
Apparently, Stability AI was not directly informed about the Getty lawsuit. “Please know that we take these matters seriously. It is unusual to have been informed of this intended legal action through the press,” a spokesperson said in an email. told to “We are still awaiting submission of the paperwork. If we receive it, we will comment appropriately.”
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Stability AI creates Stable Diffusion, a popular tool for generating AI images. Stability Diffusion will generate a unique image based on your text by entering a text prompt such as ‘dog lying in the sun’. The artificial intelligence in this tool learns the types of images it creates using tons of images found on the internet, making it smarter and more accurate over time.
Image-generating AI companies such as Stability AI, DALL-E, and NightCafe rely on human-generated imagery and artistic styles, so the intellectual property issue is fuzzy and uncharted territory. And as these tools grow in popularity, copyright law is brought to the forefront of the conversation.
Regarding the copyright for using the images generated by the tool, the Stable Diffusion site says:
Stable Diffusion also states that the images it creates are open source and protected by the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. All in all, this is a whole new area in the realm of IP and copyright law, and there are no easy answers.
Getty Images declined to provide further details in response to Mashable’s request.
Updated: January 17, 2023 at 5:45 PM EST This story has been updated to include comments from a Stability AI spokesperson.
