Plaintiffs Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz allege in the class-action lawsuit that Stability AI's Stable Diffusion tool - which Stability AI, DeviantArt and Midjourney all utilise in the automated generation of images - was trained on billions of copyright-protected images that were 'scraped' from the internet.
These images were downloaded and used by the companies in question to develop the AI “without compensation or consent from the artists" whose images were taken, according to the suit. The group seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages.
“Please note that we take these matters seriously," a Stability AI spokesperson said in a statement responding to the lawsuit. "Anyone that believes that this isn’t fair use does not understand the technology and misunderstands the law.”
Getty Images is also suing Stability AI, claiming in a statement that the company downloaded and used millions of its images for AI training without obtaining the proper licensing.
