Getty sues Stability AI for copying 12M photos and imitating famous watermark

Getty or not — Getty sues Stability AI for copying 12M photos and imitating famous watermark Getty lawsuit against Stability AI could change how courts view web scraping.

Ashley Belanger – Feb 6, 2023 10:04 pm UTC EnlargeSOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket reader comments 85 with 0 posters participating Share this story Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit

Getty Images is well-known for its extensive collection of millions of images, including its exclusive archive of historical images and its wider selection of stock images hosted on iStock. On Friday, Getty filed a second lawsuit against Stability AI Inc to prevent the unauthorized use and duplication of its stock images using artificial intelligence.

According to the company’s newestlawsuit filedin a US district court in Delaware, Stability AI has copied more than 12 million photographs from Getty Images collection, along with the associated captions and metadata, without permission from or compensation to Getty Images, as part of its efforts to build a competing business.

In this lawsuit, Getty alleged that Stability AI went so far as to remove Gettys copyright management information, falsify its own copyright management information, and infringe upon Gettys famous trademarks by duplicating Gettys watermark on some images. Reuters reported Getty’s second lawsuit against Stability AI followed last month’s filing in the United Kingdom. On top of those lawsuits, Stability AI is also facing a class-action lawsuit from artists claiming that the company trained its Stable Diffusion model on billions of copyrighted artworks without compensating artists or asking for permission.

Stability AI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. Getty Images responded with a “no comment.”

Last month, Getty said in a statement that the company believes artificial intelligence has the potential to stimulate creative endeavors, but Stability AI has gone about potentially disrupting the company’s stock imagery business in the wrong way. Rather than paying Getty for licenses to train its Stable Diffusion model in a manner that respects personal and intellectual property rights, Getty said that Stability AI did not seek any such license from Getty Images and seemingly chose to ignore viable licensing options and long?standing legal protections in pursuit of their stand?alone commercial interests. Advertisement

So far, its remained unclear what legal standing image rightsholderswhether its Getty or an individual artisthave over companies freely scraping images on websites to train AI systems like Stable Diffusion without consent. If the court sides with Getty, it could answer some of the legal questions that many artists have been asking since the controversy began. Notably, Stability AI has somewhat sympathized with artists protesting the technology, announcing a plan last month to let artists opt out of image training efforts.

Getty is in a slightly different position than artists, saying in its most recent complaint that its being targeted not just because of the superior quality of the images it hosts, but also because of all the detailed descriptions and metadata that Getty collects. A company like Stability AI can use that data to better respond to user prompts, basically using all of Gettys input to unfairly compete with the image provider, the company alleges.

Stability AI was well aware that the content it was scraping without permission from Getty Images websites was protected by copyright, Gettys complaint said.

Getty requested a jury trial to bring an end to Stability AIs blatantly infringing conduct and obtain redress for Stability AIs callous disregard for its intellectual property rights. The company is seeking damages, asking the court to compel a full and complete accounting to Getty Images for Stability AIs profits, gains, advantages, and the value of the business opportunities received from its infringing acts. reader comments 85 with 0 posters participating Share this story Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit Ashley Belanger Ashley Belanger is the senior tech policy reporter at Ars Technica, writing news and feature stories on tech policy and innovation. She is based in Chicago. Email ashley.belanger@arstechnica.com // Twitter @ashleynbelanger Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Next story → Related Stories Today on Ars