According to Silicon Republic, the London High Court has dismissed major portions of Getty Images’ copyright lawsuit against UK startup Stability AI in a ruling on November 4. Getty had sued in 2023 claiming Stability “unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright” from its archive to train its Stable Diffusion model. The court agreed Getty’s images were used for training and that Stability infringed on trademarks in some cases. However, Justice Joanna Smith ruled that Stable Diffusion doesn’t store or reproduce copyright works, so it’s not an “infringing copy.” Getty voluntarily abandoned most copyright claims during trial, leaving only secondary infringement and trademark issues that ultimately failed.
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What this means for creators
This is a pretty devastating blow for content creators and stock photo companies. Basically, the court is saying that even if your work gets used to train an AI model, as long as the model doesn’t actually contain copies of your work, it’s not infringement. Getty poured millions into this case and came up empty on the core copyright issues. Legal director Rebecca Newman thinks this shows “the UK’s secondary copyright regime is not strong enough to protect its creators.” And she’s probably right – if Getty can’t win with their deep pockets and massive legal team, what chance does an individual artist have?
The bigger picture
Here’s the thing – this ruling could have implications far beyond just copyright law. Dr. Barry Scannell points out it might collide with how European data protection authorities view personal data in AI models. The European Data Protection Board thinks an AI model is only anonymous if the chance of extracting personal data is insignificant. But if the model doesn’t contain actual copies of protected works, where does that leave data protection? We’re seeing these legal frameworks crash into each other in real time, and honestly, nobody really knows how it’ll shake out.
Where this leaves Getty
Getty’s statement sounds pretty defeated, honestly. They’re “deeply concerned” about protecting creative works given the “lack of transparency requirements” and they’re basically begging governments for stronger rules. Meanwhile, they’re pursuing Stability in other venues and just announced a partnership with AI browser Perplexity to display licensed content. It’s a classic case of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” – but joining might be their only option now. The timing’s awkward too, coming right as UK competition regulators dig into Getty’s proposed multibillion-pound merger with Shutterstock. Not exactly the strong position you want to be in during merger talks.
The future of AI copyright
So where does this leave us? Stability’s lawyers are obviously celebrating, calling this a resolution of the “core issue.” But let’s be real – this is just one battle in what’s going to be a very long war. Different courts in different countries are going to rule differently on these questions. The fundamental problem is that our copyright laws were written for a world where copying meant making copies, not training statistical models. Now we’re stuck trying to fit square pegs into round holes, and creators are caught in the middle. The only certainty here is that we’ll be seeing many more of these cases – and the outcomes will probably be just as messy.
