US artists win groundbreaking copyright dispute over artificial intelligence

As the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright law continues to evolve in the legal field, a group of visual artists scored a small victory in court. On August 12, U.S. District Judge William Orrick ruled that companies Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway AI violated the rights of artists by illegally storing their works in their image generation systems.

While Orrick declined to dismiss the related trademark claims, it rejected allegations of unjust enrichment and breach of contract, in addition to claims that the companies' conduct violated a second U.S. copyright law. Reuters reported.

The plaintiffs – illustrators Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz – first sued the AI ​​companies in January 2023 in a landmark lawsuit against tech companies that engage in AI training. Judge Orrick dismissed most of their allegations last October but allowed the artists to refile their lawsuit. The original three plaintiffs, plus seven others who joined the suit, came back with amendments in November, arguing that Stability AI's Stable Diffusion model, which all the companies used, unlawfully included “compressed copies” of their artwork.

In May, Judge Orrick ruled in a preliminary ruling to allow the copyright allegations to continue.

“The plausible conclusions at this time are that Stable Diffusion, when operated by end users, constitutes copyright infringement and was designed by its nature to facilitate that infringement,” Judge Orrick said.

This week's ruling did not address the central issues in the case – that the artists' works were used to train AI systems in violation of their copyright. The AI ​​companies claimed fair use, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act claims were ultimately dismissed with reservations.

The artists' attorneys Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick of the Saveri law firm called the decision “a significant step forward for the case” in a statement.

Judge Orrick's decision was announced ahead of a court hearing scheduled for today (August 14).