Stability AI Successfully Defends Getty Images' U.K. Copyright Infringement Claim

Key Takeaways

• The U.K. High Court ruled that Stable Diffusion is not infringing despite being trained on potentially copyrighted works.
• The decision may influence AI copyright cases in Canada due to similarities in copyright laws between the U.K. and Canada.
• The case highlights challenges in class actions for copyright claims, requiring individualized assessments for each work involved.

The U.K. High Court of Justice (the High Court) issued an important decision on November 4 that will be well-received by developers, distributors and users of AI models and systems and a disappointment to the creators and owners of artistic works.¹

Most significantly, the Court found that Stable Diffusion, a generative AI tool that creates high-quality images from text descriptions, is not an infringing article merely because it was trained using a process that Getty Images claimed involved copyright infringement. Rather, the Court concluded that the model weights