US Judge Dismisses Artists' Copyright Lawsuit Against Generative AI Firms

According to Cointelegraph, a class-action lawsuit filed by artists against generative AI firms, including Midjourney, DeviantArt, and Stability AI, has been dismissed by California District Court Judge William Orrick due to a lack of evidence. The lawsuit, filed in mid-January, claimed that Stability AI's model, Stable Diffusion, scraped billions of copyrighted images without permission to train the software. DeviantArt was also accused of incorporating Stable Diffusion on its site, potentially copying millions of images without a license and violating its own terms of service.Judge Orrick stated that the AI-generated images likely do not infringe on the artists' copyright, as it is 'not plausible' that they are derived from copyrighted images. He added that he is 'not convinced' unless the class can show that the generated images are similar to the artists' work. Some copyright claims from class members were dismissed because their images were not registered with the Copyright Office, which is required for bringing a copyright infringement suit. However, Judge Orrick allowed a copyright infringement claim from one class action member against Stability AI to proceed and gave the class 30 days to attempt to submit an amended suit with more evidence.Copyright infringement allegations are central to similar legal actions taken against AI firms, such as the Author's Guild's class action against OpenAI, Universal Music Group's suit against Anthropic, and Getty Images' suits against Stability AI in the U.S. and United Kingdom.