Latest news with #Stability
Asharq Al-Awsat
6 days ago
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
G7 Statement Expresses Support for Israel, Calls Iran Source of Instability
The Group of Seven nations expressed support for Israel and labeled its rival Iran as a source of instability in the Middle East, in a statement issued late on Monday that called for peace and stability in the region. The air war between Iran and Israel, which began on Friday when Israel attacked Iran with air strikes, has raised alarms in a region that had already been on edge since the start of Israel's military assault on Gaza in October 2023.
Express Tribune
11-06-2025
- Business
- Express Tribune
Are copyright laws a threat to AI industry?
Getty accused Stability AI of using its images to train its system. PHOTO: File Getty Images' landmark copyright lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Stability AI began at London's High Court on Monday, with Getty rejecting Stability AI's contention the case posed a threat to the generative AI industry. Seattle-based Getty, which produces editorial content and creative stock images and video, accuses Stability AI of using its images to "train" its Stable Diffusion system, which can generate images from text inputs. Getty, which is bringing a parallel lawsuit against Stability AI in the United States, says Stability AI unlawfully scraped millions of images from its websites and used them to train and develop Stable Diffusion. Stability AI – which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and in March announced investment by the world's largest advertising company, WPP – is fighting the case and denies infringing any of Getty's rights. Before the trial began on Monday, Stability AI's spokesperson said "the wider dispute is about technological innovation and freedom of ideas". "Artists using our tools are producing works built upon collective human knowledge, which is at the core of fair use and freedom of expression," the spokesperson said. In court filings, Stability AI lawyer Hugo Cuddigan said Getty's lawsuit posed "an overt threat to Stability's whole business and the wider generative AI industry". Getty's lawyers said that argument was incorrect and their case was about upholding intellectual property rights. "It is not a battle between creatives and technology, where a win for Getty Images means the end of AI," Getty's lawyer Lindsay Lane told the court. "The two industries can exist in synergistic harmony because copyright works and database rights are critical to the advancement and success of AI ... the problem is when AI companies such as Stability want to use those works without payment." Getty's case is one of several lawsuits brought in Britain, the US and elsewhere over the use of copyright-protected material to train AI models, after ChatGPT and other AI tools became widely available more than two years ago. Creative industries are grappling with the legal and ethical implications of AI models that can produce their own work after being trained on existing material. Prominent figures including Elton John have called for greater protections for artists. Lawyers say Getty's case will have a major impact on the law, as well as potentially informing government policy on copyright protections relating to AI. Reuters
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
London AI firm says Getty copyright case poses ‘overt threat' to industry
A London-based artificial intelligence company, Stability AI, has claimed that a copyright case brought by the global photography agency Getty Images represents an 'overt threat' to the generative AI industry. Getty's case against Stability AI for copyright and trademark infringement relating to its vast photography archives reached the high court in London on Monday. Stability allows users to generate images using text prompts, and its directors include James Cameron, the Oscar-winning film director of Avatar and Titanic. But Getty called the people who were training the AI system 'a bunch of tech geeks' and claimed they were indifferent to the problems their innovation might create. Stability countered by alleging that Getty was using 'fanciful' legal routes and spending approximately £10m to fight a technology it feared was 'an existential threat' to its business. Related: The 'death of creativity'? AI job fears stalk advertising industry Getty represents the work of almost 600,000 content creators globally. It alleges Stability trained its image generation model on its vast database of copyrighted photographs. As a result the program, called Stability Diffusion, outputs images with Getty Images watermarks still on them. Getty alleges that Stability was 'completely indifferent to what they fed into the training data'. It told the court the system amounted to 'sticking our trademark on pornography' and 'AI rubbish'. Lawyers for Getty said the dispute over the unlicensed use of thousands of its photographs, including images of celebrities, politicians and news events, 'is not a battle between creatives and technology, where a win for Getty Images means the end of AI'. They added: 'The problem is when AI companies such as Stability want to use those works without payment.' Lindsay Lane KC, representing Getty Images, said: 'This was a bunch of tech geeks who were so excited by AI that they were indifferent to any of the dangers or problems it presents.' In submissions to the court on Monday Getty claimed Stability had trained its image generation model on databases that contained child sexual abuse material. Stability is fighting the overall Getty claim and its lawyer said the allegations relating to child sexual abuse material were 'repugnant'. A spokesperson for Stability AI said it was committed to preventing misuse of its technology, 'particularly in the creation and dissemination of harmful content, including CSAM [child sexual abuse material]'. It said it had robust safeguards 'to enhance our safety standards to protect against bad actors'. The case comes amid a wider campaign from artists, writers and musicians, including Elton John and Dua Lipa, to protect their copyright from alleged theft by generative AI companies, which then use it to allow their customers to create new pictures, music or text. The UK parliament is locked in a similar dispute after the government proposed that copyright holders would have to opt out of their material being used to train algorithms and produce AI-generated content, otherwise it would be free to use by tech companies. 'Getty Images, of course, recognises that the AI industry overall may be a force for good, but that doesn't justify allowing those developing AI models to ride roughshod over intellectual property rights,' said Lane. The trial, which is scheduled to run for several weeks, will focus in part on the use of images by celebrated photographers, including photos of the former Liverpool football coach Jürgen Klopp taken by the award-winning British sports photographer Andrew Livesey; a picture of the Chicago Cubs baseball team by Gregory Shamus, an American sports photographer; a photo of the actor and musician Donald Glover by Alberto Rodriguez; and photos of the actor Eric Dane and film director Christopher Nolan by Andreas Rentz. Seventy-eight thousand pages of evidence have been disclosed in the case and AI experts are being called to give evidence from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Freiberg in Germany.
Indian Express
10-06-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Getty Images and Stability AI face off in British copyright trial that will test AI industry
Getty Images is facing off against artificial intelligence company Stability AI in a London courtroom for the first major copyright trial of the generative AI industry. Opening arguments before a judge at the British High Court began on Monday. The trial could last for three weeks followed by a written decision from the judge expected at a later date. Stability, based in London, owns a widely used AI image-making tool that sparked enthusiasm for the instant creation of AI artwork and photorealistic images upon its release in August 2022. OpenAI introduced its surprise hit chatbot ChatGPT three months later. Seattle-based Getty has argued that the development of the AI image maker, called Stable Diffusion, involved 'brazen infringement' of Getty's photography collection 'on a staggering scale.' Tech companies have long argued that 'fair use' or 'fair dealing' legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Getty was among the first to challenge those practices when it filed copyright infringement lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom in early 2023. 'What Stability did was inappropriate,' Getty CEO Craig Peters told The Associated Press in 2023. He said creators of intellectual property should be asked for permission before their works are fed into AI systems rather than having to participate in an 'opt-out regime.' Getty's legal team told the court Monday that the case isn't a battle between the creative and technology industries and that the two can still work together in 'synergistic harmony' because licensing creative works is critical to AI's success. 'The problem is when AI companies such as Stability AI want to use those works without payment,' Getty's trial lawyer, Lindsay Lane, said. She said the case was about 'straightforward enforcement of intellectual property rights,' including copyright, trademark and database rights. Getty Images 'recognizes that the AI industry is a force for good but that doesn't justify those developing AI models to ride roughshod over intellectual property rights,' Lane said. Stability AI had a 'voracious appetite' for images to train its AI model, but was 'completely indifferent to the nature of those works,' Lane said. Stability didn't care if images were protected by copyright, had watermarks, were not safe for work or were pornographic — it just wanted to get its model to the market as soon as possible, Lane said. 'This trial is the day of reckoning for that approach,' she said. Stability lawyers are expected to make their opening arguments Tuesday. They say in a prepared written argument that Getty's claims 'represent an overt threat to Stability's whole business, and the wider generative AI industry.' Stability has argued that the case doesn't belong in the United Kingdom because the training of the AI model technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. The company also argues that 'only a tiny proportion' of the random outputs of its AI image-generator 'look at all similar' to Getty's works. Once the trial concludes later this month, the judge's decision is unlikely to give the AI industry what it most wants, which is expanded copyright exemptions for AI training, said Ben Milloy, a senior associate at UK law firm Fladgate, which is not involved in the case. But it could 'strengthen the hand of either party – rights holders or AI developers – in the context of the commercial negotiations for content licensing deals that are currently playing out worldwide,' Milloy said. Similar cases in the U.S. have not yet gone to trial. In the years after introducing its open-source technology, Stability confronted challenges in capitalizing on the popularity of the tool, battling lawsuits, misuse and other business problems. Stable Diffusion's roots trace back to Germany, where computer scientists at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich worked with the New York-based tech company Runway to develop the original algorithms. The university researchers credited Stability AI for providing the servers that trained the models, which require large amounts of computing later blamed Runway for releasing an early version of Stable Diffusion that was used to produce abusive sexual images, but also said it would have exclusive control of more recent versions of the AI model. Stability last year announced what it described as a 'significant' infusion of money from new investors including Facebook's former president Sean Parker, who is now chair of Stability's board. Parker has experience in intellectual property disputes as the co-founder of online music company Napster, which temporarily shuttered in the early 2000s after the record industry and popular rock band Metallica sued over copyright violations. Hollywood director James Cameron, whose films include 'Titanic' and 'Avatar' is also a Stability board member. The new investments came after Stability's founding CEO Emad Mostaque quit and several top researchers left to form a new German startup, Black Forest Labs, which makes a competing AI image generator.
The Hindu
10-06-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Getty Images and Stability AI face off in British copyright trial that will test AI industry
Getty Images is facing off against artificial intelligence company Stability AI in a London courtroom for the first major copyright trial of the generative AI industry. Opening arguments before a judge at the British High Court began on Monday. The trial could last for three weeks followed by a written decision from the judge expected at a later date. Stability, based in London, owns a widely used AI image-making tool that sparked enthusiasm for the instant creation of AI artwork and photorealistic images upon its release in August 2022. OpenAI introduced its surprise hit chatbot ChatGPT three months later. Seattle-based Getty has argued that the development of the AI image maker, called Stable Diffusion, involved 'brazen infringement' of Getty's photography collection 'on a staggering scale." Tech companies have long argued that 'fair use' or 'fair dealing' legal doctrines in the United States and United Kingdom allow them to train their AI systems on large troves of writings or images. Getty was among the first to challenge those practices when it filed copyright infringement lawsuits in the United States and the United Kingdom in early 2023. 'What Stability did was inappropriate,' Getty CEO Craig Peters told The Associated Press in 2023. He said creators of intellectual property should be asked for permission before their works are fed into AI systems rather than having to participate in an 'opt-out regime." Getty's legal team told the court Monday that the case isn't a battle between the creative and technology industries and that the two can still work together in 'synergistic harmony' because licensing creative works is critical to AI's success. 'The problem is when AI companies such as Stability AI want to use those works without payment,' Getty's trial lawyer, Lindsay Lane, said. She said the case was about 'straightforward enforcement of intellectual property rights,' including copyright, trademark and database rights. Getty Images 'recognizes that the AI industry is a force for good but that doesn't justify those developing AI models to ride roughshod over intellectual property rights,' Lane said. Stability AI had a 'voracious appetite' for images to train its AI model, but was "completely indifferent to the nature of those works,' Lane said. Stability didn't care if images were protected by copyright, had watermarks, were not safe for work or were pornographic — it just wanted to get its model to the market as soon as possible, Lane said. 'This trial is the day of reckoning for that approach,' she said. Stability lawyers are expected to make their opening arguments Tuesday. They say in a prepared written argument that Getty's claims 'represent an overt threat to Stability's whole business, and the wider generative AI industry.' Stability has argued that the case doesn't belong in the United Kingdom because the training of the AI model technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. The company also argues that 'only a tiny proportion' of the random outputs of its AI image-generator 'look at all similar' to Getty's works. Once the trial concludes later this month, the judge's decision is unlikely to give the AI industry what it most wants, which is expanded copyright exemptions for AI training, said Ben Milloy, a senior associate at UK law firm Fladgate, which is not involved in the case. But it could 'strengthen the hand of either party – rights holders or AI developers – in the context of the commercial negotiations for content licensing deals that are currently playing out worldwide,' Milloy said. Similar cases in the U.S. have not yet gone to trial. In the years after introducing its open-source technology, Stability confronted challenges in capitalizing on the popularity of the tool, battling lawsuits, misuse and other business problems. Stable Diffusion's roots trace back to Germany, where computer scientists at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich worked with the New York-based tech company Runway to develop the original algorithms. The university researchers credited Stability AI for providing the servers that trained the models, which require large amounts of computing power. Stability later blamed Runway for releasing an early version of Stable Diffusion that was used to produce abusive sexual images, but also said it would have exclusive control of more recent versions of the AI model. Stability last year announced what it described as a 'significant' infusion of money from new investors including Facebook's former president Sean Parker, who is now chair of Stability's board. Parker has experience in intellectual property disputes as the co-founder of online music company Napster, which temporarily shuttered in the early 2000s after the record industry and popular rock band Metallica sued over copyright violations. Hollywood director James Cameron, whose films include 'Titanic' and 'Avatar' is also a Stability board member. The new investments came after Stability's founding CEO Emad Mostaque quit and several top researchers left to form a new German startup, Black Forest Labs, which makes a competing AI image generator.
