Getty Moves to London High Court Asks Injunction Against Sales of Stability AI System

Getty Moves to London High Court Asks Injunction Against Sales of Stability AI System

The stock photo provider Getty Images has filed an application for an injunction order with London's High Court in order to prevent Stability AI from selling its artificial intelligence image-generation system in Britain the way it has been done in other countries.

In its lawsuit, the Seattle-based company alleged Stability AI company of breaching its copyright by using its images to ‘train’ its Stable Diffusion system, according to the filing.

Stability AI has yet to file a defense to Getty's lawsuit, however it has filed a motion to dismiss Getty's separate U.S. lawsuit in May.

In London, Getty first filed its case in January, days after a similar class action lawsuit was filed in California by artists against Stability AI and other companies in the fast-growing field of generative AI.

In August 2022, London-based Stability AI released Stable Diffusion, an AI-based system for generating images from text inputs, and image generator DreamStudio.

Last year, Stability AI announced that it had raised over $100 million in funding and in its lawsuit against Getty, the company cited press reports stating that Stability AI was seeking to raise additional funding on the basis of a $4 billion valuation.

In its London lawsuit, Getty says Stability AI has relied on infringing its copyright ‘for the successful operation of its business.’

Amounts of damages sought by Getty are as of yet unspecified.

In addition, Getty has asked the High Court to order Stability AI to provide Getty with all versions of Stable Diffusion that it believes may infringe on Getty's intellectual property rights, or to destroy them altogether.