According to Fast Company, Stability AI largely prevailed against Getty Images in a British High Court case on Tuesday. Getty had accused the AI company of copyright and trademark infringement for scraping 12 million images from its website without permission to train Stable Diffusion. This closely watched case represents one of the first major legal battles in the wave of generative AI copyright lawsuits. While Stability AI mostly won, the ruling still leaves significant unanswered questions about how copyright law applies to AI training data. Tech companies have long argued that “fair dealing” doctrines in the UK allow them to train AI systems on large collections of content.
Sponsored content — provided for informational and promotional purposes.
What This Actually Means
Here’s the thing – this isn’t a complete victory for either side, but it’s definitely a win for Stability AI. The court basically said that most of Getty‘s claims didn’t hold up under UK law. But we’re still left wondering about the boundaries. Like, how much scraping is too much? And what about the actual output – if Stable Diffusion creates something that looks suspiciously like a Getty watermarked image, is that still infringement?
I think the most interesting part is how this contrasts with what’s happening in the US. American courts are still wrestling with similar questions, and the “fair use” doctrine there might get interpreted differently. So we could end up with this weird situation where training AI is legal in the UK but questionable in the US. That would be a nightmare for global AI companies.
Who This Actually Affects
For AI developers and startups, this is probably good news. It suggests that at least in the UK, you can breathe a little easier about training your models on publicly available data. But look – it’s not a blank check. The ruling was “mostly” in Stability’s favor, not completely. There are still trademark questions hanging out there.
Content creators and rights holders like Getty? They’re probably not thrilled. Their business model depends on controlling and licensing their content, and AI training threatens to undermine that. But here’s the reality – the genie’s out of the bottle. Billions of images are already in training datasets, and it’s basically impossible to put that back.
For regular users and businesses using these AI tools? Honestly, not much changes immediately. Stable Diffusion keeps working, Midjourney keeps churning out images, and the legal fights continue in the background. But long-term, these cases will determine whether AI becomes more expensive (if companies have to pay for training data) or remains relatively accessible.
The Bigger Battle
This is just one skirmish in what’s going to be a years-long war over AI and intellectual property. We’ve got similar cases with The New York Times suing OpenAI, authors going after AI companies, and music labels preparing their own fights.
What’s fascinating is how different countries might handle this differently. The EU’s AI Act is taking one approach, the UK courts another, and the US might land somewhere else entirely. We could end up with this patchwork of regulations that makes developing global AI products incredibly complex.
So while Stability AI can celebrate this win, the war is far from over. The fundamental question remains: should training AI be treated like a person learning from publicly available information, or is it more like mass copyright infringement? We’re probably years away from a definitive answer.
