A class-action lawsuit alleges that AI art generators Stability Diffusion, Midjourney, and DreamUp were trained on billions of copyrighted materials without credit, compensation, or consent of content owners.
The suit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses the AI tools of direct and vicarious copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), violations of rights of publicity, breach of contract, and "various violations" of California's unfair competition laws.
"While this new technology is enticing, these products infringe on the rights of thousands of artists and creators," according to the Joseph Saveri Law Firm LLP, which represents plaintiffs Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, Karla Ortiz, and a class of other artists and stakeholders.
Stable Diffusion, an artificial intelligence product used by Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney, was trained on the LAION-5B dataset, introduced in March 2022 with 5.85 billion image-text pairs—most of which is copyrighted.
"Artists have already begun to experience the financial burden these products can have on their livelihoods," the firm said. "While it is common for technology to replace humans, in this instance humans have not been replaced; their contributions are simply hidden, and they are left uncompensated."
As well as compensation for "wrongful conduct," the lawsuit seeks to prevent the elimination of "artist" as a viable career path, and ensure these products follow the same rules as any other technology—think streaming music—involving the use of massive amounts of intellectual property.
Proponents of AI-generated images claim the creation and use of programs like Stable Diffusion are perfectly legal. But, as the Saveri Law Firm pointed out, no court has yet addressed the question.
That may change soon. Getty this week also filed suit in the High Court of Justice in London against Stability AI, claiming it infringes on IP owned or represented by Getty Images.
"Getty Images believes artificial intelligence has the potential to stimulate creative endeavors. Accordingly, Getty Images provided licenses to leading technology innovators for purposes related to training artificial intelligence systems in a manner that respects personal and intellectual property rights," it said. "Stability AI did not seek any such license from Getty Images and instead, we believe, chose to ignore viable licensing options and long‑standing legal protections in pursuit of their stand‑alone commercial interests."