Getty Images has largely lost its London lawsuit against AI company Stability AI, though it secured a partial victory on trademark infringement. Sam Tobin reports for Reuters.
The stock image company originally sued Stability AI for copyright breach, claiming the company used Getty’s images to train its Stable Diffusion image generator. However, Getty dropped this core claim mid-trial, partly due to lack of evidence about where the AI model was trained.
Judge Joanna Smith ruled Getty succeeded in part on trademark infringement related to Getty watermarks appearing in generated images. She dismissed Getty’s secondary copyright infringement claim, finding that “Stable Diffusion does not store or reproduce any copyright works.”
Both companies welcomed the ruling. Getty called it “a significant win for intellectual property owners” and said it would use the precedent in its parallel US lawsuit. Stability AI’s general counsel said the judgment “ultimately resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue.”
Legal experts noted the ruling leaves unresolved whether training AI models on copyrighted material constitutes infringement in the UK.
