Getty Images sues Stability AI for misuse of images – 02/06/2023 – Market

Stock photo provider Getty Images has sued artificial intelligence company Stability AI, accusing it of misusing more than 12 million company photos to train its Stable Diffusion AI imaging system.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Delaware, follows a separate case by Getty against Stability in the UK and a class action lawsuit filed by artists in California against the company and other generative artificial intelligence companies. Getty and Stability declined to comment.

Getty accuses Stability of copying millions of its unlicensed photos and using them to train Stable Diffusion to generate more accurate representations based on user requests.

The image bank said its photos are particularly valuable for artificial intelligence training because of the quality of the images, variety of subjects and detailed metadata.

Getty said it has licensed “millions of suitable digital assets” to other “leading technology innovators” for artificial intelligence-related purposes and that Stability infringes on its copyright and competes unfairly.

The lawsuit also accuses Stability of infringing Getty trademarks, citing images generated by its artificial intelligence system with Getty’s watermark that the plaintiff claims may confuse users.

Getty asked the court to order Stability to stop using its photos and sought cash damages that include Stability’s profits from the alleged infringement.

Stability AI launched Stable Diffusion, an artificial intelligence-based system capable of generating images from text input, and the DreamStudio image generator last August. In October, the company raised more than $100 million in funding and was valued at $1 billion.