In a lawsuit filed Feb. 3 and made public on Monday, Getty Images claims artificial intelligence company Stability AI infringed the visual media company’s intellectual property.
Claiming that his extensive photo library has been illegally misappropriatedGetty Images announced that it had “ initiated legal proceedings against Stability AI, the creators of the popular image-generating tool Stable Diffusion. Stability AI “illegally copied and processed millions of copyrighted images to train its software, the image bank said in a press release.
According to the lawsuit filed in a U.S. District Court in Delaware, ” Stability AI copied more than 12 million photographs from Getty Images’ collection, along with associated captions and metadata, without permission or compensation from Getty Images, as part of its effort to build a competing business “.
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Stable Diffusion allegedly illegally collected Getty images
In his complaint, Getty alleges that infringement of its content ” on a large scale was decisive for the success of Stability AI. The company claims that images generated by Stable Diffusion sometimes remove the famous watermark from Getty’s name, but more often contain an altered version of it or lower the quality of the image. This obviously constitutes a violation of trademark law and infringement of the Getty trademarkaccording to the company.
In addition to stealing his footage to train his AI, Stable Diffusion also reportedly stole all the detailed descriptions and metadata from Getty, which are also very valuable. Stability AI may use this data to better respond to written user requests.
Unsurprisingly, Getty called for a jury trial. to bring an end to Stability AI’s conduct, which constitutes a gross violation, and to seek redress for Stability AI’s callous disregard for its intellectual property rights “. The company is therefore claiming damages. and asks the court to require ” a full account to Getty Images of the profits, gains, benefits and business opportunity value that Stability AI has derived from its acts of infringement “.