Getty Images accuses Stability AI of copyright infringement

In what can be called the first major copyright trial of the Generative AI industry, visual media company and supplier of stock images Getty Images is facing off AI company Stability AI in a London courtroom.

The AI company owns an AI image making tool 'Stable Diffusion' which has been widely used by the masses, mostly for the instant creation of AI artwork and photorealistic images. Getty argued in the courtroom that Stability AI scrapped millions of images from its websites and used them to train their AI-image making tool, which could generate images based on text inputs.

The visual media company is also bringing a parallel suit against the AI company in the United States.

Stability AI denied the allegations of Getty Images. In court filings, Stability AI had accused Getty's lawsuit of posing a threat to the AI company's whole business and the wider Gen AI industry.

The spokesperson of the AI company, as per a Reuters report, had explained that artists who were making use of their tools were producing work based on collective human knowledge.

In January, Getty Images and Shutterstock had announced a landmark merger aimed at creating a $3.7 billion powerhouse.

The merger came as the licensed visual content sector faces growing challenges from AI-driven tools such as Midjourney and OpenAI's DALL-E, which can generate realistic images and videos.