Getty Images, the world’s largest photo agency, has filed a lawsuit against Stability AI for copyright infringement. The company is accused of copying more than 12 million photos from Getty and using them in its own products without permission. Additionally, Stability AI allegedly imitated Getty’s famous watermark to make it appear as if the images were licensed through their service.
The complaint was filed on February 18th in the U.S District Court for the Central District of California and names both Stability AI and its CEO, Michael Krieger, as defendants. According to Getty’s legal team, “Stability AI has engaged in a brazen campaign of copyright infringement by unlawfully copying millions of photographs from Getty Images’ library without authorization or license.”
In response to this accusation, Krieger released a statement saying that his company had not done anything wrong and that they had taken all necessary steps to ensure compliance with copyright law: “We are confident that our practices have been fully compliant with applicable laws,” he said. He also noted that his company had reached out to Getty multiple times over the past year but received no response until now when they were served with a lawsuit instead.
This isn’t the first time Getty has gone after companies for alleged copyright violations either; last year they sued Microsoft over Bing Image Widget which allowed users to search for images directly within Office applications like Word and PowerPoint without licensing them first from Getty’s library. In addition to filing lawsuits against tech giants such as Microsoft and Google (for their use of unlicensed images), they’ve also targeted smaller startups such as PicScout who used image recognition technology without proper licenses or permissions from photographers whose work was being used by PicScout’s customers.
It remains unclear how much money is at stake here since neither party has disclosed any details about potential damages yet; however one thing is certain – this case will be closely watched by other companies operating in similar spaces because it could set an important precedent regarding what constitutes fair use versus outright theft when it comes to digital media content online today.
For many years now there have been ongoing debates about whether or not certain types of uses should be considered fair game under existing copyright laws; however these conversations often fail to take into account how quickly technology can evolve which makes it difficult for lawmakers keep up with changing trends in digital media consumption habits across different platforms online today – something which could potentially lead us down an even murkier path when trying determine what exactly constitutes illegal behavior moving forward into future generations where new technologies continue emerging faster than ever before!
Ars Technica
