Judge rules artists’ copyright claims against AI companies can proceed

A U.S. District Court judge has given permission to a group of artists to pursue claims against several generative artificial intelligence image- and video-making companies that alleges their services infringe on their copyrights.

The case was brought by three artists against Stability AI Ltd., DeviantArt Inc. and Midjourney Inc. in January 2023 and alleged that the companies make unauthorized use of existing copyright images. A generative AI model is trained based on existing works to create new works. The artists claimed that the training of the AI models, allegedly based on their works – it has not been proven that the models were – constitutions copyright theft.

A subsequent court ruling in October found that the copyright infringement claims against Midjourney and DeviantArt by plaintiffs Kelly McKernan, Karla Ortiz and Sarah Andersen were “defective in numerous respects” and could not sustain themselves. However, the court at the time found that a single direct claim alleging direct infringement against Stability AI could proceed.

Reuters reports that U.S. District Judge William Orrick has now ruled that the artists behind the court case have reasonably argued that the companies violate their rights by illegally storing their works on their systems. The judge did, however, throw out other claims that accused the AI companies of unjust enrichment, breach of contract and breaking a separate U.S. copyright law.

The decision did not address the core claim that the accused companies misused the artist’s works to train their AI systems directly and hence infringed on copyright. Nor did the judge rule on whether the use of such works constitutes fair use under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act.

An attorney representing the artists said in a statement that the ruling was “a significant step forward for the case,” despite the fact that the judge did not rule on the core copyright components alleged by the artists.

AI has exploded onto the scene, and when historians look back at this time, it will be the decade that AI first came to the forefront as a potentially world-changing technology.

But as history shows, new technology always has those who stand against progress. The artists, in this case, are clearly the 21st century version of the 19th century cotton and wool mill workers who stood against the progress of mechanical and automated machinery.

Though it’s easy to sympathize with the artists who are being replaced by AI, even if they were to win their case in the U.S. and, by some miracle, AI companies were not able to continue in the country, there are 194 other countries in the world not subject to U.S. court rulings. So progress in AI will continue irrespective of three artists suing a handful of AI companies.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram