Getty Images’ copyright dispute against leading AI company Stability AI moves on to trial

A UK court has determined that the copyright dispute initiated by Getty Images against the prominent artificial intelligence (AI) firm, Stability AI, will proceed to trial.

Contrary to the contentions put forth by Stable Diffusion creators, the court dismissed their arguments and found validity in Getty’s claim that its copyrighted materials were utilized in training Stability AI’s AI models.

The legal clash between Stability AI and Getty Images revolves around the alleged unauthorized utilization of Getty’s copyrighted content by Stability AI, a key competitor of the renowned OpenAI. Getty Images contends that Stability AI scraped millions of its images from the internet to train its image generation tool, named Stable Diffusion.

Attempting to evade the trial, Stability AI, with a valuation of $1 billion (£790 million), argued that the case should not be adjudicated in a British court, asserting that its models were predominantly trained in Munich by a team from Munich University and not in the UK.

Stability CEO Emad Mostaque insisted, “I am confident that no Stability employee based in the UK has ever worked on developing or training Stable Diffusion,” as reported by the Telegraph.

However, Justice Joanna Smith, in her decision, expressed skepticism about Stability AI’s claims. According to the Telegraph, she suggested that evidence provided by Mostague might be “inaccurate or incomplete,” and the apparent inconsistencies raised doubts about the credibility of his statements.

Judge Smith emphasized the need for a full trial due to “unanswered questions,” stating, “Disclosure may establish that Mr Mostaque’s evidence is unimpeachable.”

Referring to statements made by Mostaque in media appearances and YouTube interviews, the judge indicated that further investigation was warranted. In a 2022 interview, Mostaque mentioned the company’s facilitation of residency applications for Ukrainian and Russian developers to expedite their relocation to the UK.

Stability AI accused Getty Images of creating a diversion, asserting that the developers might have been engaged in other projects. It dismissed the evidence provided by Getty Images as “speculative.”