According to Silicon Republic, the London High Court dismissed major portions of Getty’s copyright lawsuit against Stability AI in a November 4th ruling. Getty had claimed in its 2023 lawsuit that Stability “unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright” from its archive to train the Stable Diffusion model. The court agreed Getty’s images were used for training and found some trademark infringement, but threw out the secondary copyright claim. Justice Joanna Smith ruled that AI models like Stable Diffusion that don’t store or reproduce copyright works aren’t “infringing copies.” Getty voluntarily dismissed most copyright claims during trial, leaving only secondary infringement and trademark issues for the final ruling.
What this means for creators
This is a pretty devastating blow for content creators hoping UK copyright law would protect them. Rebecca Newman from Addleshaw Goddard put it bluntly – the judgement suggests “the UK’s secondary copyright regime is not strong enough to protect its creators.” And Getty‘s statement really drives home the frustration here. They spent millions pursuing just one AI company and basically came up empty-handed on the core copyright issues. Now they’re begging governments for stronger transparency rules because the current legal framework makes it nearly impossible to protect creative works.
The bigger picture
Here’s the thing – this ruling could have implications far beyond just copyright law. Dr. Barry Scannell pointed out it might collide with how European data protection authorities view personal data in AI models. The European Data Protection Board thinks AI models should only be considered anonymous if there’s an insignificant chance of extracting personal data. But if UK courts are saying models that don’t store copyrighted works aren’t infringing, where does that leave personal data protection? We’re looking at a potential regulatory collision course.
Where this leaves everyone
So what happens now? Getty’s pursuing this “in another venue” and pushing for legislative changes, but that’s a long game. Meanwhile, Stability AI gets to breathe easier knowing their core training approach survived a major legal challenge in the UK. And creators? They’re basically left hoping users will play nice. Getty’s new partnership with Perplexity to display licensed content in AI search tools feels like a pivot – if you can’t beat them, at least try to educate users about legal alternatives. But let’s be real – when AI can generate near-perfect images without paying licensing fees, how many users are going to bother with the proper channels?
