FILE PHOTO: The letters for AI (artificial intelligence) are placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Oct 30 (Reuters) – A California federal court judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by visual artists who accused Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt of misusing their copyrighted work in connection with the companies’ generative artificial intelligence systems.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick dismissed certain claims in the proposed class action filed by Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Carla Ortiz, including all allegations against Midjourney and DeviantArt. The judge said the artists could file an amended complaint against the two companies whose systems use Stability’s text-to-image Stable Diffusion technology.
Orrick also completely rejected McKernan and Ortiz’s claims of copyright infringement. The judge allowed Andersen to continue to pursue her key claim that Stability’s alleged use of her work to teach Stable Diffusion infringed her copyright.
The same allegation is at the heart of other lawsuits filed by artists, authors and other copyright owners against generative AI companies.
“Even Stability acknowledges that determining the truth of these allegations — whether the copying in violation of the Copyright Act occurred in the context of Stable Diffusion training or occurred when Stable Diffusion was running — cannot be resolved at this stage,” Orik said.
Lawyers for the artists, Joseph Savery and Matthew Butterick, said in a statement that their “core claim” survived and that they were confident they could address the court’s concerns about their other claims in an amended complaint to be filed next month.
A spokesperson for Stability declined to comment on the decision. Representatives for Midjourney and DeviantArt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The artists said in their January complaint that Stability used billions of images “scrubbed” from the Internet, including theirs, without permission to teach Stable Diffusion to create its own images.
Orrick agreed with all three companies that the images the systems actually create likely do not infringe on the artists’ copyrights. He allowed the claims to be amended, but said he was “not convinced” claims based on the systems’ output could survive without showing that the images were substantially similar to the artists’ work.
The judge also dismissed other claims by the artists, including that the companies violated their rights of publicity and competed against them unfairly, with permission to resubmit.
Orrick dismissed McKernan and Ortiz’s copyright claims because they had not registered their images with the US Copyright Office, a requirement for filing a copyright lawsuit.
The case is Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:23-cv-00201.
For the artists: Joseph Savery of the Law Office of Joseph Savery; and Matthew Butterick
For stability: Paul Schoenhardt of Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson
For Midjourney: Angela Dunning of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
On DeviantArt: Andy Gass of Latham & Watkins
Read more:
Lawsuits accuse AI content creators of misusing copyrighted works
Artificial intelligence companies want US court to throw out artists’ copyright lawsuit
US judge finds flaws in artists’ lawsuit against AI companies
Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington
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