Getty Images Sues AI Stability Again In The US For Copyright Infringement Of 12 Million Images Copy

Getty Images again filed a lawsuit in the United States (US) against Stability AI. (photo: doc. Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Getty Images has again filed a lawsuit in the United States (US) against Stability AI, the creator of the open-source AI art generator Stable Diffusion. Previously, the agency that provided the online photo filed a lawsuit in London, England last month.

In the US lawsuit, Getty Images accuses Stability AI of blatant violations of the company's intellectual property on a shocking scale. He claims Stability AI has copied more than 12 million images from its database without permission and without compensation.

According to Getty Images, this is a step towards building a competitive business, and the startup has violated the company's copyright and trademark.

"Stable Diffusion occasionally generates images that closely resemble and are derivatives of Getty Images proprietary content that Stability AI copies extensively during model training," the lawsuit reads.

Getty Images asked the court to make Stability AI remove the infringing images and pay up to $150,000 for each infringing image, in addition to other damages for violating copyright laws.

To substantiate its lawsuit, Getty Images includes a list of more than 7,000 images plus metadata and copyright registrations that the company says were used to train Stable Diffusion.

Additionally, Getty Images notes that some of the images produced by Stable Diffusion contain their own watermark, the same watermark that appears when viewing photos before downloading an image license.

The system deconstructs the image by adding noise to the image itself. Then, the system de-noises the modified image, adding a different aspect to its trained data lexicon.

If multiple images of a soccer match contain the same Getty Images watermark, the system interprets the logo as an integral aspect of the final product. Getty Images also added several examples of distorted watermarks in the lawsuit.

While Stability AI knows its AI art creators created the Getty Images distorted watermark and other watermarks, they didn't change the model to prevent that from happening, according to the suit claims.

Launching The Verge and Gizmodo, Tuesday, February 7, the lawsuit is the latest in the ongoing legal battle between Getty Images and Stability AI.

Last month, Getty Image started legal proceedings at the High Court of London, England against Stability AI. However, that claim has not been served.

Getty Images isn't the first to sue Stability AI for alleged copyright infringement. Three artists have also filed a class action lawsuit against the startup, as well as fellow AI art creators Midjourney and DeviantArt, over claims their AI art generator violated copyright laws.