UK ruling in Getty Images' AI lawsuit leaves key IP questions unanswered

The mixed ruling was claimed as a victory by both Stability AI and Getty Images, muddying the legal waters around AI and intellectual property.

The United Kingdom’s High Court of Justice issued a mixed ruling on Tuesday in the Getty Images v. Stability AI intellectual property case filed in 2023, which mostly favored Stability AI but left key questions unanswered about AI’s use of copyrighted material.

Getty owns a library of copyrighted online stock images — which it licenses to users for a fee — and alleged that Stability’s Stable Diffusion AI model, which is trained using online material, infringed upon its trademark and copyrighted material.

Stability’s Stable Diffusion AI model infringed on Getty’s trademark by reproducing its watermark in certain cases. However, the findings were “extremely limited in scope,” Justice Joanna Smith ruled.

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