Getty Images launches a major battle against Stability AI: Stable Diffusion is not just plagiarism, it's unfair competition.

Getty Images, one of the world's largest image licensing platforms, is preparing to go head-to-head with the generative AI industry. The company's CEO, Craig Peters, said that AI companies are using unauthorized creative material to build business models, which is no longer innovation, but outright "stealing." At present, Getty has filed a lawsuit against Stability AI in the United States and the United Kingdom, seeking to protect copyright and creators' rights.

Heaping out AI models with authoring? Getty: It's stealing, not innovation

In an interview with CNBC, Craig Peters stated bluntly that AI startups like Stability AI are "stealing copyrighted content" to train their models and profiting from it in the commercial market. He criticized these actions as a form of "predation" disguised as "innovation," pointing out that "this is fundamentally a fast-action strategy centered on destruction and constitutes unfair competition."

Although Peters emphasizes that Getty maintains an open attitude towards market competition, he believes that the current operations of AI companies have exceeded reasonable bounds and even affect the livelihoods of creators.

Are AI providers relying on "rhetoric" to protect themselves? Peters: We are engaged in a rhetorical battle.

Peters points out that the AI industry often uses "innovation will be stifled" as an excuse to oppose paying creators. To which he responded: "We are fighting a rhetorical war." He believes that this statement is just a rhetoric by the industry to try to evade responsibility.

Currently, Getty accuses Stability AI of using up to 12 million images to train the Stable Diffusion model without authorization, causing substantial harm to content creators. This case has entered judicial proceedings in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Stability AI denies that Getty's allegations have legal basis and claims that the images it uses comply with the principle of "Fair Use." This principle allows limited use of copyrighted works under certain circumstances, particularly when the use is transformative, creates new meaning, or expression.

Why did Getty target Stability AI? The cost of litigation limits the choices.

Although Stability AI is not the only AI company involved in copyright disputes, Peters admits that Getty targeted Stability AI in part because "the cost of legal action is too high."

"Even a company as large as Getty, we cannot pursue every infringement case that happens weekly," Peters explained. The company has already invested millions of dollars in a lawsuit, which prevents them from fully targeting other infringers.

Capital continues to pour into the AI sector, the war has just begun.

Generative AI is currently favored by tech giants, with companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral continuously extracting vast amounts of data from the internet to train AI models. Major companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are also continuously investing billions of dollars into these AI firms.

However, as the wave of lawsuits intensifies, including The New York Times' lawsuit against OpenAI and accusations from several music companies against the AI music platforms Suno and Udio, it shows that this industrial tug-of-war is far from over.

Getty: We are confident, but this battle is not easy to fight.

Peters stated that he has strong confidence in Getty in this lawsuit, but he also admitted that factors such as the lawsuit taking place in two countries, the unclear training location, and the difficulty of gathering evidence make the entire process "complicated and expensive."

"We need to do our due diligence and gather evidence, and the other party will retaliate. This back-and-forth will constantly burn money, and the challenge is extremely high." He added that from a global perspective, the facts tend to side with Getty, but the specific outcome still depends on the operation of the laws and judicial procedures in each country.

Currently, the case is expected to begin its preliminary hearing stage on June 9, primarily to clarify whether Stability AI needs to bear legal responsibility for the allegations. This lawsuit may become an important barometer between the AI industry and content creators, influencing the legal boundaries and industry regulations for future AI training models.

This article Getty Images launches a heavy attack on Stability AI: Stable Diffusion is not just plagiarism, it is unfair competition. It first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.