Kelvin Chan and Matt O’Brien
LONDON (AP) – Getty Images is playing against the stability AI of an artificial intelligence company in London courtroom for the first major copyright trial in the generation AI industry.
Opening discussions before a judge in the UK High Court began on Monday. The trial could last three weeks, followed by a written decision from the judge, which could be expected at a later date.
London-based Stability owns a widely used AI image creation tool that was released in August 2022, which sparks enthusiasm for the immediate creation of AI artwork and photorealistic images.
Seattle-based Getty claims that the development of an AI image maker called Stable Spread involves “on an astonishing scale” and “a brave violation” of Getty’s photo collection.
High-tech companies have long argued that the legal doctrine of “fair use” or “fair transaction” in the US and UK allows them to train AI systems with large-scale writings and images. Getty was the first to challenge these practices when he filed copyright infringement lawsuits in the US and the UK in early 2023.
“The stability was inadequate,” Getty CEO Craig Peters told The Associated Press in 2023. He said that rather than taking part in the “opt-out system,” intellectual property creators should seek permission before the work is supplied to the AI system.
Getty’s legal team told the court on Monday that the case is not a battle between the creative and technology industries, and that the two can work together in “synergistic harmony” as Creative Works licenses are essential to AI success.
“The problem is when AI companies like stability AI want to use those works without paying,” said Lindsay Lane, Getty’s trial lawyer.
She said the case relates to “simple enforcement of intellectual property rights,” including copyright, trademark and database rights.
Getty’s image “recognizes that the AI industry is a force of good, but it does not justify those developing AI models to broadly harness the rights of intellectual property,” Lane said.
Stability AI had a “greedy appetite” for images to train AI models, but “we were completely indifferent to the nature of those works,” Lane said.
Stability didn’t care if the images were protected by copyright, not watermarked, not work safe, or pornographic. I wanted to get the model to the market as soon as possible.
“This exam is the day we took that approach into consideration,” she said.
Stability lawyers are expected to have the opening discussion on Tuesday. They stated in the argument written that Getty’s argument “represents an obvious threat to the overall business of stability and an obvious threat to the broader generative AI industry.”
Stability claims that the incident does not belong to the UK as AI models were technically trained elsewhere, and so was it on a computer run by US technology giant Amazon. The company also insists that “just a small percentage” of the random output of the AI image generator “look” in Getty’s work.
When the trial closes later this month, it is unlikely that the judge’s decision will give the AI industry what they most want, expanding the copyright exemption for AI training, said Ben Milloy, a senior associate at Fladgate, a UK law firm that is not involved in the case.
However, “in the context of commercial negotiations for content licensing transactions currently being rolled out around the world, either party (rights holder or AI developer) can be strengthened,” Miloi said.
Similar cases in the US have not yet been brought to court.
In the years since introducing open source technology, stability has faced challenges in leveraging the popularity of tools, fighting lawsuits, misuse and other business issues.
The root of stable diffusion was developed by computer scientists at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, in collaboration with New York-based high-tech company Runway to develop the original algorithm. University researchers praised stability AI for providing servers that train models that require large amounts of computing power.
Stability denounced the runway for releasing an early version of stable spreading that was used to generate abusive sexual images, but said it could have exclusive control over recent versions of the AI model.
Last year’s stability unveiled what is described as an injection of “significant” funding from new investors, including former Facebook president Sean Parker, who now chairs Stability’s board. Parker has experience in intellectual property disputes as co-founder of the online music company Napstar. This was temporarily closed in the early 2000s after the recording industry and popular rock band Metallica sued copyright violations.
Hollywood Director James Cameron is also a stable board member in films including “Titanic” and “Avatar.”
The new investment, after Stability founding CEO Emad Mostaque quit, several top researchers formed new German startup Black Forest Labs, creating competing AI image generators.
O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
Original issue: June 9, 2025, 7:26pm EDT
