A lot of AI companies are facing lawsuits due to allegations of using copyrighted materials without consent. Stability AI is also facing legal consequences for the same reason as three artists claim that it infringed their artworks. However, a judge dismissed the case as problems emerged for two of the plaintiffs.
Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against Stability AI
As three of the artists claimed that Stable Diffusion used their artworks to generate images, US district judge William H. Orrick found that two of the plaintiffs namely Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz, never registered the works they claim were infringed with the Copyright Office.
This became an obstacle in the class action suit as the Judge ruled that the complaint was "defective in numerous respects." With the discovery, the two artists were dropped from the suit, and the remaining plaintiff, illustrator Sarah Andersen, will have to amend the copyright lawsuit.
Andersen will have 30 days to fix the complaint for it to proceed to a trial, and that's not all that she has to amend. The lawyers stated that they are confident that they can address the court's concerns, as reported by Ars Technica.
The artists' main complaint was that AI companies were guilty of copyright infringement and violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and California laws regarding unfair competition and rights to publicity.
Stability AI was generating "in the style" of their content, which leads to all outcomes becoming "derivative work." As a result, they believe that this can be "misconstrued as fake." The Judge, however, was not convinced of the argument.
To continue with the suit, the plaintiff will have to "clarify their theory with respect to compressed copies of Training Images and to state facts in support of how Stable Diffusion... operates with respect to the Training Images."
In response, the defendant states that Andersen cannot "proceed with her copyright infringement allegations unless she identifies with specificity each of her registered works that she believes were used as training images."
In this aspect, Judge Orrick believes that due to AI products being able to create works by mentioning Andersen's work specifically as the basis, "the inferences about how and how much of Anderson's protected content remains in Stable Diffusion or is used by the AI end-products might be stronger."
A Bigger Company Had the Same Claim
This isn't the first time that Stability AI was the recipient of a lawsuit for the same grounds. Visual company giant Getty Images also claimed that the AI company used millions of images from its database without permission or compensation.
Getty accuses Stability AI of "brazen infringement of Getty Images' intellectual property on a staggering scale" with over 12 million photos used to train its AI model, as reported by The Verge. The lawsuit came around the same time that the three artists filed their complaint.
Legal experts argue that Getty Images may have a stronger case than the three artists, which is true now more than ever as two of the plaintiffs were dropped from the case. The stock photo provider also has a more accurate case regarding copyright infringement.
