GETTY has lost a huge copyright case against AI with experts warning “the genie is now fully out of the bottle”.
Getty Images succeeded in part against Stability AI at the High Court in London – but experts said that this was far from a landmark copyright victory.
The court upheld limited trademark claims tied to AI-generated images reproducing Getty’s watermark.
But crucially, the court did not uphold Getty’s claim that training AI on copyrighted material without permission is a breach of copyright.
The judge ruled: “An AI model such as Stable Diffusion which does not store or reproduce any copyright works (and has never done so) is not an ‘infringing copy’.”
Colette Mason, Author & AI Consultant at London-based Clever Clogs AI, said the court ruling has left more questions than answers.
She added: “This ruling doesn’t draw a clear line in the sand. It shows how blurred the lines still are. Getty may have won on trademarks, but the copyright question at the heart of generative AI remains unanswered. That’s the real headline. AI developers can’t keep pretending their systems are neutral when they’re built on creative work taken without consent.
“But right now, the law can’t even keep up long enough to decide what consent means. What this judgment really exposes is the vacuum. ‘Scrape now, apologise later’ is still the industry’s default setting, and smaller creators have no realistic way to fight back when even Getty struggled to prove its case.
“Until regulators make transparency mandatory, not a PR choice, AI will keep feeding on the creative commons it claims to celebrate. Now the genie is fully out of the bottle, is using second-generation material as training acceptable, or avoidable?”
Mitali Deypurkaystha, Human-First AI Strategist & Author at Newcastle upon Tyne-based Impact Icon AI, said AI, which is now pervading all areas of the economy, has a “data-grab mindset”.
She continued: “The frustrating thing here is that many AI companies still behave as if they’re above normal business practice. In every other industry, if you use another’s work, you pay fair compensation.
“Yet AI firms consume vast amounts of quality data from artists and organisations for free, until lawsuits force their hand, as is the case with Getty.
“AI needs quality data like humans need food. But no one expects a free lunch, apart from these AI companies. This data-grab mindset echoes a digital form of colonialism: raiding the world’s creativity for profit without consent.”
