Stability AI largely wins UK court battle against Getty Images
By Associated Press | Published: 2025-11-04 17:00:00 | Source: Fast Company – technology
Artificial intelligence company Stability AI prevailed against Getty Images on Tuesday in a British newspaper Legal battle over intellectual property.
Seattle-based Getty has accused Stability AI of violating its copyright and trademark by deleting 12 million images from its website, without permission, to train its popular image generator Stable Diffusion.
The closely watched case in Britain’s Supreme Court was among the first in a wave of lawsuits related to generative artificial intelligence, as film studios, authors and artists challenged technology companies’ use of their work to train AI-based chatbots.
Technology companies have long argued that the legal principles of “fair use” or “fair dealing” in the US and UK allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writing or images. Experts said Tuesday’s ruling provides some clarity, but still leaves big unanswered questions about copyright and artificial intelligence.
According to the judge’s written ruling, Getty narrowly won its argument that Stability had infringed its trademark, but lost the rest of its case.
Both sides declared victory.
“This is a huge win for intellectual property owners,” Getty Images said in a statement.
Getty shares fell 3% before the US opening bell
London-based Stapley said it was pleased with the ruling.
“This final ruling finally resolves the copyright concerns that were the primary issue,” Stability General Counsel Christian Doyle said.
Getty accused Stability of primary and secondary copyright infringement.
The former involves reproducing something without permission — similar to a dodgy factory producing counterfeit Chanel handbags or pirated CDs — while the latter involves importing those copies from another country, legal experts said.
In this case, Getty said that Stability’s use of its image library to train and develop Stable Diffusion’s AI model amounted to an infringement of the underlying copyright. Stability responded that the case did not belong to the UK because training of the AI model technically occurred elsewhere, on computers operated by US tech giant Amazon.
During the three-week trial in June, Getty said Its underlying copyright was droppedallegations, indicating that she didn’t think it would work. But it is still pursuing secondary infringement claims. Even if Stable is trained in AI outside the UK, Getty said offering Stable Diffusion to British users would amount to importing illegal copies of its images into the country.
Judge Joanna Smith rejected Getty’s claims, ruling that Stable Diffusion’s AI did not infringe copyright because it “does not store or reproduce any copyrighted works (and never has).”
Getty also sued for trademark infringement because its watermark appeared on some images generated by Stability’s chatbot.
The judge sided with Getty but added that the case was only partially successful, and that its findings were “historical and very limited in scope.”
“Although I found cases of trademark infringement, I could not determine whether these cases were widespread,” she said.
Experts said Getty’s move to drop part of the copyright case means AI training remains in legal limbo.
“The decision leaves the UK without a meaningful ruling on the legality of the process of learning from copyright material for an AI model,” said Ian Connor, intellectual property partner at law firm Michelmors.
Smith said there was “very real societal importance” in determining how to balance the creative and technology industries. But she added that the court could only rule on the remaining “shrinking” case and could not consider “cases that had been abandoned.”
A Getty spokeswoman declined to say whether there would be an appeal.
Getty is also pursuing a copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States against Stability. She originally filed a lawsuit in 2023 but refiled the case in federal court in San Francisco in August.
The lawsuits against Getty are among a slew of cases that highlight how the generative AI boom is fueling conflict between technology companies and creative industries.
AI companies are now fighting more than 50 copyright lawsuits, so many that a tech industry lobby group has asked President Donald Trump to help stop the court battles, saying they threaten AI innovation.
Among these cases, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit brought by the authors, while a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit from 13 authors Against meta platforms. Warner Bros. has raised Midjourney sued for copyright infringement, as did Disney and Universal In separate lawsuits Claim that his image creator creates copyrighted characters.
— Kelvin Chan, AP Business Writer
AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this report.
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(Tags for translation)Artificial Intelligence
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