The trial involving Getty Images and Stability AI began in London this week, and the AI company has claimed in its opening statement that the copyright case represents an “overt threat” to the entire industry. Getty rejects that motion arguing in court yesterday that it “is not a battle between creatives and technology, where a win for Getty Images means the end of AI.”
Getty has accused Stability AI of using thousands of its copyrighted photographs to train its AI image generator model Stable Diffusion in a “brazen infringement” on a “staggering scale”. In the past, Getty has shown that Stable Diffusion could reproduce an image with the Getty watermark on.
According to a report in The Guardian, Getty alleges that Stability engineers were “completely indifferent to what they fed into the training data”. The photo agency says that it amounted to “sticking our trademark on pornography” and “AI rubbish”.
“Getty Images, of course, recognizes that the AI industry overall may be a force for good, but that doesn’t justify allowing those developing AI models to ride roughshod over intellectual property rights,” says Getty Images representative, Lindsay Lane KC.
Getty says it is a problem that AI companies, such as Stability, use its work without payment. The Seattle-based company represents almost 600,000 content creators around the world — a good chunk of those are photographers.
“This was a bunch of tech geeks who were so excited by AI that they were indifferent to any of the dangers or problems it presents,” adds Lane.
The Guardian notes that the trial will focus on specific photos taken by famous photographers. Getty plans to bring up photos of the Chicago Cubs taken by sports photographer Gregory Shamus and photos of film director Christopher Nolan taken by Andreas Rentz.
All-in-all, 78,000 pages of evidence have been disclosed for the case and AI experts are being called in to give testimonies. Getty is also suing Stability AI in the United States in a parallel case. The trial in London is expected to run for three weeks and will be followed by a written decision from the judge at a later date.
Getty also alleges that Stable Diffusion had child sexual abuse material within its training data as well as Getty’s content. A claim that Stability’s lawyer calls “repugnant,” adding that it has protections in place “to enhance our safety standards to protect against bad actors”.
Last month, Getty CEO Craig Peters revealed that the company is spending “millions and millions” of dollars on the case. Stability noted this in its opening statement alleging Getty is using “fanciful” legal routes to fight a technology that it fears is an “existential threat” to its business.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
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