Getty Images Sues Stability AI for Copyright Infringement

Getty Images Sues Stability AI for Copyright Infringement

The media company Getty Images has filed a copyright infringement suit against the artificial intelligence company Stability AI, Inc. it alleged that Stability AI, Inc had infringed on the visual media company's intellectual property.

The suit was filed before the Delaware US District Court following a separate Getty lawsuit against Stability in the UK, accused the London-based generative AI company of copying more than 12 million photographs and associated captions and metadata without consent.

Getty alleged that Stability had used Getty's IP in violation of trademark law to train its Stable Diffusion model. A latent text-to-image model implemented to generate photorealistic images based on text input, Stable Diffusion is regarded as a direct competitor for creative imagery by Getty.

Additionally, the suit alleges trademark-protected Getty IP was used as training data for the AI platform, and 'its infringement of Getty Images' content on a massive scale has been instrumental in its success to date.

Another argument floated by Getty Images relates to its trademark. Stable Diffusion is well known for recreating the company's watermark in some of its images, and Getty contended that the appearance of this watermark on the model's "bizarre or grotesque images, dilutes the quality of the Getty Images Marks by blurring or tarnishment."

Getty claimed that Stable Diffusion's output often contained a modified version of a Getty Images watermark.

Getty's complaint stated this usage, particularly in low-quality images, creates a confusion about the image source and falsely implies an association.