Getty Images is suing the company behind the stablecoin, saying the AI creator illegally scraped its content
Getty Images has claimed that its massive image library has been illegally scrapped, and has announced that it has “initiated legal action” against Stability AI, the creators of the popular AI image creation tool Stable Diffusion.
AI firm “illegally copied and manipulated millions of copyrighted images” to train its signature software, the stock-photo giant has argued. Press release issued today.
“Getty Images believes that artificial intelligence has the power to stimulate creative endeavours,” the ad explained, and, as such, offers special licenses for the use of images in training AI systems.
“Stability Amnesty International has not requested any such license from Getty Images, and instead, we believe it has chosen to ignore applicable licensing options and long-term legal protections in pursuit of its own independent business interests,” the statement read.
A Getty spokesperson further clarified that the company sent a pre-action letter to Stability AI and filed a claim with the High Court of Justice in London, but declined to comment further on the case. Stability AI representatives did not immediately respond to an email from Artnet News.
Stable Diffusion launched last year and quickly became a hit online, distinguishing itself from other text-to-image AI tools like DALL-E 2 and Midjourney at its open source model and free price point. But as soon as the program became widespread, users began checking its source.
a A recent study From the 12 million images from the Stable Diffusion data set I found more than 15,000 images from Getty. Images streamed by the AI image generator often included a distorted version of the Getty Images watermark as well. (Other sources of images used for Stable Diffusion training include Etsy, Shutterstock, and print and poster retailer Fine Art America.)
Example of converting text to image from Stable Diffusion 2.0. Image: AI Stabilization GitHub.
GT The case comes in between Growing concerns On the development of artificial intelligence technologies and the threats they pose to the copyright of image creators and licensors – the legal implications of this will likely need to be disentangled in court in the coming years.
Diffuse Stable and other AI systems “learn” by sifting through the millions of man-made images that are often removed from the web by tech companies without their authors’ consent. Amnesty advocates argue that this practice is protected by fair use laws; The artists said it infringed their copyrights.
Getty, owner of the world’s largest image bank, has been proactive in its fight against legal violations of artificial intelligence. Last September, in a polarizing move, the company It banned all AI-generated artwork from its platform.
In an interview with the edgeGetty Images CEO Craig Peters compared the current stage of AI image technology to the nascent days of digital music, when decentralized services Offered free mp3 files before they were discontinued Waves of copyright lawsuits.
“I equal [this to] Napster and Spotify,” Peters said. “Spotify negotiated with intellectual property rights holders — labels and artists — to create a service. You can argue about whether or not they are fairly compensated in that, but it’s a negotiation based on the rights of individuals and entities.”
We similarly believe that these generative models need to address the intellectual property rights of others. That’s the crux of it,” the CEO continued. “And we’re taking this action to make it clear.”
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