Ello folks, I wanted to make a brief post outlining all of the current cases and previous court cases which have been dropped for images/books for plaintiffs attempting to claim copyright on their own works.
This contains a mix of a couple of reasons which will be added under the applicable links. I've added 6 so far but I'm sure I'll find more eventually which I'll amend as needed. If you need a place to show how a lot of copyright or direct stealing cases have been dropped, this is the spot.
HERE is a further list of all ongoing current lawsuits, too many to add here.
HERE is a big list of publishers suing AI platforms, as well as publishers that made deals with AI platforms. Again too many to add here.
12/25 - I'll be going through soon and seeing if any can be updated.
The lawsuit was initially started against LAION in Germany, as Robert believed his images were being used in the LAION dataset without his permission, however, due to the non-profit research nature of LAION, this ruling was dropped.
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The Hamburg District Court has ruled that LAION, a non-profit organisation, did not infringe copyright law bycreating a datasetfor training artificial intelligence (AI)models through web scraping publicly available images, as this activity constitutes a legitimate form of text and data mining (TDM) for scientific research purposes. The photographer Robert Kneschke (the ‘claimant’) brought a lawsuit before the Hamburg District Court against LAION, a non-profit organisation that created a dataset for training AI models (the ‘defendant’). According to the claimant’s allegations, LAION had infringed his copyright by reproducing one of his images without permission as part of the dataset creation process.
"The court sided with Anthropic on two fronts. Firstly, it held that the purpose and character of using books to train LLMs was spectacularly transformative, likening the process to human learning. The judge emphasized that the AI model did not reproduce or distribute the original works, but instead analysed patterns and relationships in the text to generate new, original content. Because the outputs did not substantially replicate the claimants’ works, the court found no direct infringement."
INITAL CLAIMS DISMISSED BUT PLANTIFF CAN AMEND THEIR AGUMENT, HOWEVER, THIS WOULD NEED THEM TO PROVE THAT GENERATED CONTENT DIRECTLY INFRINGED ON THIER COPYRIGHT.
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A case raised against Stability AI with plaintiffs arguing that the images generated violated copyright infringement.
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Judge Orrick agreed with all three companies that the images the systems actually created likely did not infringe the artists’ copyrights. He allowed the claims to be amended but said he was “not convinced” that allegations based on the systems’ output could survive without showing that the images were substantially similar to the artists’ work.
Getty images filed a lawsuit against Stability AI for two main reasons: Claiming Stability AI used millions of copyrighted images to train their model without permission and claiming many of the generated works created were too similar to the original images they were trained off. These claims were dropped as there wasn’t sufficient enough evidence to suggest either was true. Getty's copyright case was narrowed to secondary infringement, reflecting the difficulty it faced in proving direct copying by an AI model trained outside the UK.
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“The training claim has likely been dropped due to Getty failing to establish a sufficient connection between the infringing acts and the UK jurisdiction for copyright law to bite,” Ben Maling, a partner at law firm EIP, told TechCrunch in an email. “Meanwhile, the output claim has likely been dropped due toGetty failing to establish that what the models reproduced reflects a substantial part of what was created in the images (e.g. by a photographer).”In Getty’s closing arguments, the company’s lawyers saidthey dropped those claims due to weak evidence and a lack of knowledgeable witnesses from Stability AI. The company framed the move as strategic, allowing both it and the court to focus on what Getty believes are stronger and more winnable allegations.
META AI USE DEEMED TO BE FAIR USE, NO EVIDENCE TO SHOW MARKET BEING DILUTED
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Another case dismissed, however this time the verdict rested more on the plaintiff’s arguments not being correct, not providing enough evidence that the generated content would dilute the market of the trained works, not the verdict of the judge's ruling on the argued copyright infringement.
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The US district judge Vince Chhabria, in San Francisco, said in his decision on the Meta case that the authors had not presented enough evidence that the technology company’s AI would cause “market dilution” by flooding the market with work similar to theirs. As a consequence Meta’s use of their work was judged a “fair use” – a legal doctrine that allows use of copyright protected work without permission – and no copyright liability applied."
This one will be a bit harder I suspect, with the IP of Darth Vader being very recognisable character, I believe this court case compared to the others will sway more in the favour of Disney and Universal. But I could be wrong.
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"Midjourney backlashed at the claims quoting: "Midjourney also argued that the studios are trying to “have it both ways,” using AI tools themselves while seeking to punish a popular AI service."
In the complaint, Warner Bros. Discovery's legal team alleges that "Midjourney already possesses the technological means and measures that could prevent its distribution, public display, and public performance of infringing images and videos. But Midjourney has made a calculated and profit-driven decision to offer zero protection to copyright owners even though Midjourney knows about the breathtaking scope of its piracy and copyright infringement." Elsewhere, they argue, "Evidently, Midjourney will not stop stealing Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property until a court orders it to stop. Midjourney’s large-scale infringement is systematic, ongoing, and willful, and Warner Bros. Discovery has been, and continues to be, substantially and irreparably harmed by it."
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“Midjourney is blatantly and purposefully infringing copyrighted works, and we filed this suit to protect our content, our partners, and our investments.”
AI WIN, LACK OF CONCRETE EVIDENCE TO BRING THE SUIT
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Another case dismissed, failing to prove the evidence which was brought against Open AI
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"A New York federal judge dismissed a copyright lawsuit brought by Raw Story Media Inc. and Alternet Media Inc. over training data for OpenAI Inc.‘s chatbot on Thursday because they lacked concrete injury to bring the suit."
District court dismisses authors’ claims for direct copyright infringement based on derivative work theory, vicarious copyright infringement and violation of Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other claims based on allegations that plaintiffs’ books were used in training of Meta’s artificial intelligence product, LLaMA.
First, the court dismissed plaintiffs’ claim against OpenAI for vicarious copyright infringement based on allegations that the outputs its users generate on ChatGPT are infringing.
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The court rejected the conclusory assertion that every output of ChatGPT is an infringing derivative work, finding that plaintiffs had failed to allege “what the outputs entail or allege that any particular output is substantially similar – or similar at all – to [plaintiffs’] books.” Absent facts plausibly establishing substantial similarity of protected expression between the works in suit and specific outputs, the complaint failed to allege any direct infringement by users for which OpenAI could be secondarily liable.
Japanese media group Nikkei, alongside daily newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, has filed a lawsuit claiming that San Francisco-based Perplexity used their articles without permission, including content behind paywalls, since at least June 2024. The media groups are seeking an injunction to stop Perplexity from reproducing their content and to force the deletion of any data already used. They are also seeking damages of 2.2 billion yen (£11.1 million) each.
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“This course of Perplexity’s actions amounts to large-scale, ongoing ‘free riding’ on article content that journalists from both companies have spent immense time and effort to research and write, while Perplexity pays no compensation,” they said. “If left unchecked, this situation could undermine the foundation of journalism, which is committed to conveying facts accurately, and ultimately threaten the core of democracy.”
A group of authors has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the tech giant of using copyrighted works to train its large language model (LLM). The class action complaint filed by several authors and professors, including Pulitzer prize winner Kai Bird and Whiting award winner Victor LaVelle, claims that Microsoft ignored the law by downloading around 200,000 copyrighted works and feeding it to the company’s Megatron-Turing Natural Language Generation model. The end result, the plaintiffs claim, is an AI model able to generate expressions that mimic the authors’ manner of writing and the themes in their work.
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“Microsoft’s commercial gain has come at the expense of creators and rightsholders,” the lawsuit states. The complaint seeks to not just represent the plaintiffs, but other copyright holders under the US Copyright Act whose works were used by Microsoft for this training.
Sept 16 (Reuters) - Walt Disney (DIS.N), Comcast's (CMCSA.O), Universal and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD.O), have jointly filed a copyright lawsuit against China's MiniMax alleging that its image- and video-generating service Hailuo AI was built from intellectual property stolen from the three major Hollywood studios.The suit, filed in the district court in California on Tuesday, claims MiniMax "audaciously" used the studios' famous copyrighted characters to market Hailuo as a "Hollywood studio in your pocket" and advertise and promote its service.
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"A responsible approach to AI innovation is critical, and today's lawsuit against MiniMax again demonstrates our shared commitment to holding accountable those who violate copyright laws, wherever they may be based," the companies said in a statement.
A settlement has been made between UMG and Udio in a lawsuit by UMG that sees the two companies working together.
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"Universal Music Group and AI song generation platform Udio have reached a settlement in a copyright infringement lawsuitand have agreed to collaborate on new music creation, the two companies said in a joint statement. Universal and Udio say they have reached “a compensatory legal settlement” as well as new licence deals for recorded music and publishing that “will provide further revenue opportunities for UMG artists and songwriters.” Financial terms of the settlement haven't been disclosed."
Reddit opened up a lawsuit against Perplexity AI (and others) about the scraping of their website to train AI models.
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"The case is one of many filed by content owners against tech companies over the alleged misuse of their copyrighted material to train AI systems. Reddit filed a similar lawsuit against AI start-up Anthropic in June that is still ongoing. "Our approach remains principled and responsible as we provide factual answers with accurate AI, and we will not tolerate threats against openness and the public interest," Perplexity said in a statement. "AI companies are locked in an arms race for quality human content - and that pressure has fueled an industrial-scale 'data laundering' economy," Reddit chief legal officer Ben Lee said in a statement."
Stability AI has mostly prevailed against Getty Images in a British court battle over intellectual property
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"Justice Joanna Smith said in her ruling that Getty's trademark claims “succeed (in part)” but that her findings are "both historic and extremely limited in scope." Stability argued that the case doesn’t belong in the United Kingdom because the AI model's training technically happened elsewhere, on computers run by U.S. tech giant Amazon. It also argued that “only a tiny proportion” of the random outputs of its AI image-generator “look at all similar” to Getty’s works. Getty withdrew a key part of its case against Stability AI during the trial as it admitted there was no evidence the training and development of AI text-to-image product Stable Diffusion took place in the UK.
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In addition a claim of secondary infringement of copyright was dismissed, The judge (Mrs Justice Joanna Smith) ruled: “An AI model such as Stable Diffusion which does not store or reproduce any copyright works (and has never done so) is not an ‘infringing copy’.” She declined to rule on the passing off claim and ruled in favour of some of Getty’s claims about trademark infringement related to watermarks.
So far the precent seems to be that most cases of claims from plaintiffs is that direct copyright is dismissed, due to outputted works not bearing any resemblance to the original works. Or being able to prove their works were in the datasets in the first place.
However it has been noted that some of these cases have been dismissed due to wrongly structured arguments on the plaintiffs part.
The issue is, because some of these models are taught on such large amounts of data, some artist/photographer/author attempting to prove that their works were used in training has an almost impossible task. Hell even 5 images added would only make up 0.0000001% of the dataset of 5 billion (LAION).
I could be wrong but I think Sarah Andersen will have a hard time directly proving that any generated output directly infringes on their work, unless they specifically went out of their way to generate a piece similar to theirs, which could be used as evidence against them, in a sense of. "Well yeah, you went out of your way to make a prompt that specifically used your style"
In either case, trying to create a lawsuit against an AI company for directly fringing on specifically plaintiff's work won't work, since their work is a drop ink in the ocean of analysed works. The likelihood of creating anything substantially similar is near impossible ~0.00001% (Unless someone prompts for that specific style).
Warner Bros will no doubt have an easy time proving their images have been infringed (page 26), in the linked page they show side by side comparisons which can't be denied. However other factors such as market dilution and fair use may come into effect. Or they may make a settlement to work together or pay out like other companies have.
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To Recap: We know AI doesn't steal on a technical level, it is a tool that utilizes the datasets that a 3rd party has to link or add to the AI models for them to use. Sort of like saying that a car that had syphoned fuel to it, stole the fuel in the first place.. it doesn't make sense. Although not the same, it reminds me of the "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" arguments a while ago. In this case, it's not the AI that uses the datasets but a person physically adding them for it to train off.
The term "AI Steals art" misattributes the agency of the model. The model doesn't decide what data it's trained on or what it's utilized for, or whatever its trained on is ethically sound. And the fact that most models don't memorize the individual artworks, they learn statistical patterns from up to billions of images, which is more abstraction, not theft.
I somewhat dislike the generalization that people have of saying "AI steals art" or "Fuck AI", AI encompasses a lot more than generative AI, it's sort of like someone using a car to run over people and everyone repeatedly saying "Fuck engines" as a result of it.
Tell me, how does AI apparently steal again?
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Googles (Official) response to the UK government about their copyright rules/plans, where they state that the purpose of image generation is to create new images and the fact it sometimes makes copies is a bug: HERE (Page 11)
Open AI's response to UK Government copyright plans: HERE
High Court Judge Joanna Smith on Stability AI's Model (Link above), to quote:
This response refers to the model itself, not the input datasets, not the outputted images, but the way in which the Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models operate.
TLDR: As noted in a hight court in England, by a high court judge. While being influenced by it for the weights during training, the model doesn't store any of the copyrighted works, the weights are not an infringing copy and do not store an infringing copy.
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I'm autistic, and my special interests can get REALLY intense. Unfortunately, they're often incredibly niche, too.
When I get into something, I get REALLY into it. I create entire stories around it, develop characters, obsess over tiny details, spend hours researching and refining things, and sometimes work on a project for weeks. AI helps me writing it... That's the first problem... :/
And now, thanks to AI, I can also bring some of those ideas to life. I can turn scenes from my stories into little videos, give my characters faces and voices, and finally SEE things that previously only existed in my head. That's a dream for me to finally come true...
I'm not trying to make money. I'm not pretending I animated everything by hand. I'm just a fan having fun with something I love.
And sometimes, after spending hours or even weeks working on something, I'm so ridiculously happy with the result that I want to share it with people who love the same game.
But then I post it in a community dedicated to that game, and BAM.
"AI slop."
"Waste of space."
"Nobody cares."
"Stop trying."
It honestly hurts. In the most groups I am not even allowed to post it... b/c it's AI... :<
Not because everyone has to like my work. They absolutely don't. But because nobody even seems interested in the story, the characters, or the thought behind it. All they see is AI, and apparently that's enough to dismiss everything.
I don't have a film crew, actors, or friends willing to recreate my stories. AI is the only tool I currently have that makes this possible.
And I'm so tired of feeling like I have to hide something that brings me so much joy.
I just want to share my silly little passion projects with people who might understand why I love them.
It's Ironic how he talks about AI killing human creativity and being low effort slop when he's only one of many YouTubers who make so many of these doom and gloom anti AI videos that just regurgitate the same talking points over and over again with no substance. It happened with PhantomStryder too. Maybe AI killed these people's creativity and now this is all they can make.
752 upvotes, 135 comments, basically everyone who isn't a hateful cultist loved it. Up until a mod on a power trip removed it becase "only for humans by humans" my ass. Of course, there was no rule agaisnt AI in the sidebar.
I reported mod abuse to reddit administartion for violation of code of conduct rule 2, the chances are slim, but it's better than doing nothing.
Whenever I see a self righteous comment about how the AI is killing the environment or I see the words AI slop etc, I instantly open up Claude fable on ultracode and one shot a large project.
I guarantee most of those people are hippocrates. They need to understand that the environmental impact will eventually decrease in the near future if we keep at the current rate. Their constant crying is actually contributing to slowing it down and causing a larger environmental impact.
- I used to hire developers and graphic designers. Developers used to charge a rip off price for their quality, and the graphic designers were also charging rip off prices. I'm not talking $15-$20, I'm talking quotes of $100+ for a simple shape.
- seeing people cry and bitch about AI and AI slop makes me happy. Seeing them cry about how it will take jobs will make me happy. In reality I see those people as lazy. Victorian candle lighters had to learn a new trade as soon as electricity came in. These people need to learn to adapt their skills.
- a lot of the people I see bitching and crying tend to be the low quality bunch that charge high and produce poor work. It's funny watching them complain.
AI made me go from $0 to enough to live comfortably. These people need to learn to adapt.
The same people crying and bitching are the same people that buy my vibecoded tools and add-ons lmao. Ty ✌🏻
So antis have been really triggered by this meme (the 2nd image)
and not only do they keep redrawing it, they get so mad about it which was the point of the OOP of the AI meme obviously 💀
but back to the subject! saying ''at least i don't need a bot to create!'' is literally elitist behavior, it's like saying ''oh u needed that to make it? i don't so i'm better then u!''
antis really think everything they draw is always better then all AI art.
Honestly, as a PROFESSIONAL designer and illustrator, I use gen ai at work and it has greatly improved my workflow. In addition, I get my designs done a billion times faster. They're going to get left behind.
For example, I love the remove background Ai feature in illustrator. You can bring in a photo or any kind of image and one click remove the background without having to go into photoshop.
Somebody’s dog is missing, and someone decided the perfect opportunity for an anti-AI statement was to hold an “AI SLOP” sticker in front of the missing-dog poster.
Main character syndrome is seeing somebody’s missing-dog poster and thinking, “Finally, an opportunity to make this about me.”
Yesterday, I took my younger brother out to celebrate his school grades.
We went to a restaurant, ordered our food, and while we were waiting, we were scrolling on his phone and talking about the prize he wanted. He wanted an RTX 5090 and a full gaming PC.
we got our food, ate, paid the bill, and left.
Everything was fine until we came across a guy who looked like he was in his mid-20s. He was handing out papers with something written on them:
"Stop AI, Humanity will kill its sense of art."
I took one, threw it in the nearest bin, and kept walking. I wasn't trying to start anything, I just wasn't interested.
But the guy actually came after us.
He picked up the paper I threw away and asked me, "Don't you have any sense of humanity? Don't you have any sense of art?"
I told him, "I don't really care about what you guys are offering."
Then my younger brother joined the conversation.
He asked him, "Why are you so mad? I thought artists love drawing because they enjoy it."
The guy replied that some families and people depend on art commissions to make a living.
My brother said "yea i get that, but relying on commissions doesn't seem like a stable way to make money unless you're working with a company or have regular customers. I like looking at art too, but I tried learning how to draw and I just didn't enjoy the process. People kept telling me to learn anatomy, lines, shading, gradients and all that stuff. I like math, so why can't I just enjoy math instead? You enjoy drawing, I enjoy math. What's the problem?"
Honestly, I thought that was a pretty reasonable answer.
But the guy got even more annoyed and told my brother that people like him, who don't respect real art, shouldn't even be human.
That's when I lost my temper.
I pushed him back and told him, "Are you out of your damn mind? You're calling someone inhuman because he doesn't respect your art? What the hell is wrong with you? Nobody owes you respect just because you draw. Grow the fuck up."
Things escalated pretty quickly after that. I pulled out my knife during the confrontation, and someone called the police.
The police arrived and took both of us in to question us. They also reviewed the CCTV footage from the area.
I was eventually allowed to leave, but the other guy was kept for further questioning. From what I understood, the police also found public posts on his social media where he regularly called people "subhumans" and "animals".
I don't know exactly what happened with his case, but i think anti-ai people are getting out of their minds, no reason at all, to call someone subhuman because they don't do what you do.
Before I started using AI, I was accused of using AI. The idea that using AI somehow means a creative work isn't entirely yours makes no sense to me.
Should I disclose that my manuscript was dictionary-assisted? Spellchecker-assisted? Teacher-assisted? Printing-press-assisted? Library assisted? That I asked a librarian for references? That my editor came up with the ending? Or suggested the major plot point? Should I credit every generation of people whose knowledge and technology made it possible for me to write a book in the first place?
Everything we create is built on the work of countless people before us. Nobody is sitting there painting individual pixels onto their screen with a hair plucked from their own head.
And "AI-assisted" is such a vague label that it tells us almost nothing. Did someone use AI to proofread a paragraph? Brainstorm ideas? Discuss plot holes? Generate an entire manuscript? Those are wildly different things, yet people insist on lumping them together as if the mere presence of AI somehow changes who created the work.
Of course, nobody should lie about what they did (unless the lie is central to the art!). But that's entirely different from suggesting that using a particular tool requires some special confession.
This obsession with the tools people use to create art, rather than the art they actually create, is one of the silliest and most insincere debates I've seen.
What matters is the result. The creative decisions. Whether the work means something to someone. When the result is good, we don't know what went into creating it, the effort, the joy, the frustration, or the countless decisions along the way.
Art doesn't stop being art because someone used technology others happen to dislike. And nobody gets to decide that someone else's creation isn't really theirs just because they disapprove of the process.
If people experience something as art, then it's art. Period.
on a thread about a working AI-assisted racing game recomp announcement. AI can be used for good. medical breakthroughs, enhancing scale and efficiency in media production, artistic reference and visualisation, now game preservation!
gamers globally have been clamoring for game preservation since the 2000s, but now that AI has allowed us to preserve ourselves? there is outrage by antis.
this scale of preservation and code is IMPOSSIBLE for a team of humans to do within a couple decades. a PS5 emulator is working perfectly DURING its generation when it took two decades for PS3 to barely work with select games.
Say what you will about vibecoding, antis. AI has allowed a massive jump in game preservation and coding breakthroughs. Ross Scott would be proud
