Getty drops copyright allegations in UK lawsuit against Stability AI

Getty Images dropped copyright infringement allegations from its lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Stability AI as closing arguments began Wednesday in the landmark case at Britain’s High Court.

Seattle-based Getty’s decision to abandon the copyright claim removes a key part of its lawsuit against Stability AI, which owns a popular AI image-making tool called Stable Diffusion. The two have been facing off in a widely watched court case that could have implications for the creative and technology industries.

Tech companies have been training their AI systems on vast troves of writings or images available online, citing “fair use” or “fair dealing” legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom. Getty was among the first to challenge those practices with copyright infringement lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom in early 2023.

In its lawsuit, Getty alleged that Stability’s use of its images infringed its intellectual property rights, including copyright, trademark and database rights.

However, Getty’s move indicates that the company didn’t think its copyright allegations would succeed.

After witness and expert testimony, Getty made the “pragmatic decision to pursue only the claims for trade mark infringement, passing off and secondary infringement of copyright,” according to a written copy of its closing arguments.

Getty continues to accuse Stability of infringing its trademark because its AI model was trained on images that included Getty’s watermarks, which were sometimes reproduced by the image generator.

Getty also alleges that Stability indirectly infringed its copyright because even if Stability’s AI models were trained outside of Britain, it still faces local laws if the models produced images in the country.

But Stability has argued that because training of the AI model technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by US tech giant Amazon, the case doesn’t belong in the United Kingdom.

London-based Stability said it welcomed Getty’s move.

“We are pleased to see Getty’s decision to drop multiple claims after the conclusion of testimony,” the company said in a statement. “We are grateful for the time and effort the UK court has put forth to address the important matters in this case. We look forward to the court’s final judgement.”

Closing arguments are expected to last until the end of the week. A written decision from the judge expected at a later date.

AP