Getty Images Sues Stable Diffusion Over Alleged Content Scraping

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Artificial intelligence is the latest buzzword in our part of the world and elsewhere.

blue and black ball on blue and white checkered textile
Blue and black ball on blue and white checkered textile. Photo by Michael Dziedzic.

It seems like firms can’t get enough of it whether it is a chatbot spouting out English missives or a tool generating scenes out of whole cloth, artificial intelligence is more than impressive, it can be downright scary.

But how did we get here? Well, as far as images are concerned, most of these tools were trained using real-world images and artwork and, in some cases, without permission to do so.

We’ve covered a couple of stories in this vein but today’s headline concerns archive titan Getty Images and Stable Diffusion’s AI art tool which the former claims infringed on their rights via content scraping.

Getty Images CEO Greg Peters told The Verge, “The driver of that [letter] is Stability AI’s use of intellectual property of others — absent permission or consideration — to build a commercial offering of their own financial benefit. We don’t believe this specific deployment of Stability’s commercial offering is covered by fair dealing in the UK or fair use in the US. The company made no outreach to Getty Images to utilize our or our contributors’ material so we’re taking an action to protect our and our contributors’ intellectual property rights.”

Specifically, the lawsuit targets the development process that many of these AI tools go through which involves the use of content that might be rights protected. In other words, while these tools might be generating their own “content,” they’re developing the ability to do so using the work of others and aren’t creating these works in a vacuum. Peters compares this stage of AI content to the early digital music revolution and emphasizes the lawsuit isn’t about stopping the development of AI tools but, instead, creating some kind of framework within which these tools can be developed with respect to the legal rights of other content. You can read the interview at this link.

Any thoughts on AI and AI-generated content are welcome in the comments.

Before you leave: we have some other news you might like to read in our Photography News section.

[The Verge]

About Author

Kehl is our staff photography news writer since 2017 and has over a decade of experience in online media and publishing and you can get to know him better here and follow him on Insta.

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