A few generative AI (GenAI) developers, including Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney, were sued by artists last year for utilizing their creations unlawfully to train AI models. The most recent court decision permits the lawsuit to move on with its discovery phase. Find out how this decision will affect GenAI companies.
- According to a recent court decision, artists’ complaints alleging copyright infringement against a few GenAI businesses may now move on with discovery.
- Artists applauded the decision, saying it will give them access to more details about the software tools used by these corporations, which are typically opaque.
A few artists sued OpenAI and other generative AI (GenAI) companies, including Microsoft, Stability AI, Meta, and Midjourney, in September of last year, alleging that they were exploiting their creations unlawfully to train AI models. The most recent ruling by the court allows the lawsuit to move forward with discovery while dismissing certain claims.
A Brief Background
There has been a conflict between artists and GenAI development businesses ever since the capabilities of GenAI models and tools began to expand and enable them to create material other than text. Numerous artists have charged that businesses are stealing and using their creations to train AI models without their consent. Several GenAI businesses have faced criticism for purported copyright violations. This has even prompted the University of Chicago and other groups to create tools like Nightshade and Glaze, which make it difficult to replicate original artwork and stop AI models from harvesting digital artwork data.
Judge Allows Amended Claims To Proceed
A few writers and artists sued Stability AI, OpenAI, and Midjourney, among other GenAI developers, last year, alleging copyright violations. They claimed that these businesses trained AI systems to react to commands from humans and exploited their work without permission. They added that users of these platforms could occasionally make exact copies of their creations.
Judge William Orrick granted a copyright infringement case against Stability AI after this lawsuit, however, he dismissed a few additional claims. He further requested that the plaintiffs’ attorneys revise the claims to include additional specifics.
During a recent hearing, the judge considered the updated reasons and granted Stability AI’s new claim of induced copyright infringement. In addition, he granted permission for copyright and trademark infringement claims against Midjourney as well as copyright claims against DeviantArt and Runway AI.
Specifically, the allegations against Midjourney focused on the company’s alleged deception of consumers by providing a “Midjourney Style List” comprising 4,700 artists whose names could be utilized to create works in their style. The artists contended that the list was made without their consent and gave the impression of being falsely endorsed.
The claims were deemed sufficiently substantiated by the judge to warrant additional discussion. Nevertheless, he rejected a few of the points he had previously returned for revision. He rejected, for instance, accusations that the businesses had broken the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and that DeviantArt had broken its terms of service by permitting the scraping of user content for training datasets.
Artists Celebrate the Ruling
While the verdict is simply an early victory, and the matter still needs to be challenged in court, many artists expressed joy and welcomed it. Kelly McKernan, an artist behind the action, said that the verdict will allow them to request additional information from firms in discovery, which might uncover data about the software tools that are generally a black box.
Karla Ortiz, an additional artist, stated in a post on X that businesses who use large-scale artificial intelligence open network-like (LAION) datasets and/or Stable Diffusion models for them may now be held accountable for copyright infringement.
A High Stakes Case for AI Companies and Artists
It is hard to foresee how this case will turn out. Several cases have previously been brought against AI businesses because they illegally trained ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion on vast amounts of copyrighted content and could readily replicate such works. Nonetheless, AI firms have frequently been successful in defending themselves. A number of the initial lawsuits have already been dropped, although some are still pending, such as the New York Times action against OpenAI.
Conversely, several large corporations, such as Microsoft and OpenAI, are negotiating multimillion-dollar contracts for continuous data access with publishers and artists. However artists have less power to demand payment, and smaller businesses like Midjourney and StabilityAI have less cash to purchase access to data.
Furthermore, the way that courts decide these kinds of issues will largely determine how widely AI is adopted in the film industry and other creative processes. The possibility of a court decision stating that utilizing copyrighted information to train AI systems constitutes copyright infringement is one of the factors delaying the technology’s adoption. The fact that AI-generated works are not protected by copyright is another factor to take into account.
As a result, there are significant legal ramifications for all parties involved.