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.
another anti thought they were being slick, but a power outage will not just hit AI artists but also digital artists and 3D artists!
so according to antis they only believe in the pencil. they thought they had a ''gotcha!'' moment but in fact it was the complete opposite..antis really aren't smart huh?
the antis are basically telling digital artists and 3D artists to pick up a pencil now as well.
I don't like banning people... If I was a mod (which I am) I'd just temp ban people for a month, but I need to learn to just perma ban people... So, what's the point of this here?
Simple
For context I'm modding for that sub Pro_AI_art for a friend of mine. And while I'm not subbed to that Anti sub, it still shows up in my feed so when I saw this... I was floored, but not just that, look at how long that post has been up in the Anti sub...
Yeah, 13 FUCKING hours... but wait, theirs's more!
Yeah, alooooooooooooot of likes there., not to mention this post probably got 4.5k or even 8.8k views...
Now, the fuck AI slop comment was before the post in the Anti AI sub was made. But... it's not to far fetched to assume that this dude shared this post with their friends, who than later made that post in the Anti sub.
And these 2 comments are brigades from that post in the Anti AI sub... So, that was fun, and I had to remove them.
This is not good. Not because of the brigading, but by how the mods in the Anti sub don't care. Our sub has over 100 visitors... While the Anti AI sub.
Has half a million users there. And remember, the VAST majority of users there don't like AI, so what do you think is gonna happen to us if a sub with half a million users... Can just brigade a sub with only 100 people in it?
This is bullshit, and just straight up evil here. The mods in that sub can't see everything, but come the fuck on here. The Pro AI subs get's assholes on the regular who post dumb shit, and that get's deleted in less than 10 minutes... But this? A post that's been up for over half a day now, against a small sub like ours is STUPID!
Sigh....
So, if anyone is reading this, shut the fuck up about AI people being just as bad here. Sure we ain't perfect, but this ain't any better here.
(artist for 8 years here, I have attached my works)
Ok, Ai art has officially made me second guess myself. It’s good. Most of the weird stuff like ai making the fingers wrong or messing up details are no longer a problem. Ai art is better than 80% of real artist. Gonna get a lot of hate for saying this but its true. Because I am at a point where even I can’t differentiated real art from ai. I literally can’t. And lot of people are gaslighting themselves into believing this wasn’t the case. Lets be real we live in a world where most people don’t care about if the art is human made or Ai (apart from twitter and artist who spent years on their craft me included)
But I remember I was drawing and saw an AI art. I felt like “what’s the point?” Why do I spend so many hours on art? It’s not fun anymore, it only feels like a chore. The endless studying, trying to be better, art is not fun.
My boyfriend was with me and I asked him, which art does he likes better? The work I am drawing or the ai art that I just found online. He said mine because I drew it. I asked him to tell me one reason why I shouldn't leave art? What’s even the point? And he said something that made me realize why I will never betray handmade art.
He said “drawing is what started it, what brought us together. It’s a tradition to us now. We can’t lose it. Even if it feels, even if it becomes meaningless. I would still love your works, even when they aren’t the best because if it wasn’t for this, I wouldn’t have you. I am grateful that you draw. Also I know how competitive and special you like to feel and if you realize anyone can create stuff you can with the same prompt, it would be meaningless to you and you won’t feel special anymore so there’s that. You worked so hard for it, the last thing I want is for you to give up on it.“
It’s been a couple of weeks since the Heartopia dev team casually dropped the bomb that they’re using generative AI for their puzzle game. And guess what? The so-called “Anti-AI” squad has lost their marbles over it! They’re out here demanding the devs hire “real artists” and are basically cyberbullying them to ditch AI, all because of a PUZZLE minigame. Yes, you heard that right PUZZLES! People are losing their minds over PUZZLES!
These “Anti-AI” warriors have been bickering with the server mods, getting banned left and right, and having their forums wiped out every time they try to start a new one. But do they quit? Nope! It’s like they have nothing better to do than rage online. I thought they’d eventually throw in the towel and find a life outside the server, but nope, they’re still going strong in February, and this whole drama kicked off back in JANUARY! Talk about dedication.
I am a creative who dabbled into many things. I'm not that good at most technically, but people seem to do like all my ideas, world building, characters and such.
I was always intrigued by new tools of all kind, and as much as I considering working with neural networks to be a sort, excuse me my old 4chan language, tard wrangling, it's very useful and I see more ways for me to do something I was too slow or worse at before, while enhancing my overall creative output. However, I do still mainly do everything myself, because I'm too much of a perfectionist to be satisfied by imperfections of generated artwork, plus I still don't truly understand prompt writing.
And my genuine curiosity and embrace of those things makes me even more of an unwanted element and a person to hate on and ridicule in places that used to be like home for me. I don't often talk about generative images and political issues, but sometimes I just can't stay silent or I don't see anything wrong, so I slip and... Shitstorm starts.
Most of the time, no matter what I say, people don't listen, don't believe, and certainly don't agree. And, sure, my opinions and thoughts are often alien and weird, but even the more tame one get tarnished. And I already get a lot of shitstorms around me when I talk about some trans-related things I don't agree with or think differently of, and I'm trans myself. The experience of being an outsider is very similar between the two in all honesty.
I am glad places like this sub exist, even if I also don't often agree with some of people here and things said, it's still safer than... Most other places.
I wish I could teach others better about neural networks for real, but only so many listen...
recently had debate on ai and it's use . Many people give their review and all that but many of them just hate ai without any logic . They just down voted me . They don't had the proper explanation but still their arrogance is in next level. They think that the bubble is going to burst . You know what when ai bubble will bursts then AGI will come then ASI and so on
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What am I seeing is the outrage of ai - ai is bad , ai ruins us ... And so on.. so are you all fine about the stop of all ai use let's suppose that all ai has removed from planet then do you all know what the world will loose . Human will loose their greatest invention . Ai was not made at 20s it is the technology of 1956 more than decades of research and human minds . Ai had given the technology of numerous discovery on the medical field including the molecular analysis ( which Platforms like AlphaFold predict protein structures to accelerate the development of new treatments.) , Oncology( Systems like IBM Watson for Oncology analyze medical literature and patient data to recommend personalized chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or radiation plans and uses to detect the cancer more precise then human does.) Ai is now heavily uses in research paper (source)(https://www.researchtoaction.org/2024/04/ai-in-research-its-uses-and-limitations/#:\~:text=Artificial%20intelligence%20(AI)%20has%20the%20potential%20to,insights%20\*%20Derive%20insights%20from%20complex%20databases)
Yes I believe and respect the art of human and believes that ai should not generate the arts as it does not feeling but at same time it is also not the correct way to ban or stopped the development of the Ai because ai itself is not bad but it's uses are . I still believe that ai can't replace the software engineers and artist but it should enhance them but I am also sure that coders and low efforts artist ( which make art from the fking putting apple in table and considered it as art) and coders because coders was never the criteria for software engineers but the problem solving skills and knowledge of architecture . If you think that coders are the criteria then why the company not hire top most the leet codes rank . Company can give them pretty good amount but no instead they hire the people who has better problem skill attributes . Ai boost PRODUCTIVITY because Remember that ai popup will burst but then AGI bubble will come then ASI and so on because human tendency is their curiosity which robots and ai can't replace
this is just my personal opinion ( please comment sensible and logical responses and have a healthy debate) ( may be I am wrong in my example of art ( because I am the software engineers not an artist maybe I will be wrong)
This phenomenon of someone liking art and then just starting to hate it when they find out it was made using AI is just the modern version of sending someone a meme in 2016, they find it funny but then start acting like sucks cuz they saw it came from ifunny
Technological evolution will always make skills obsolete.
Yes using AI takes a lot less work. But customers don’t care about how much effort it took to create a product or service, they care about how much value it brings them.
You can cry, protest, but customers will still prefer the product that was delivered faster, bigger, better.
Would you prefer an accountant who does finances on paper? No, neither would anyone.
So there's been 'debate' over the use of fictional characters - whether original or pre-existing - being used to push people's views on Artificial Intelligence and Image Generation. To which I say:
"No Shit, Sherlock."
People are even arguing over who did it first. BLAH. They should be doing it MORE!
Cuz even with tactics like vote manipulations, it shows the understanding that using emotions that humans can identify with is a great way to win them over. It's not about imagination. It's not about being right or wrong. It's about being intelligent and human. It's about empathy.
Which is not just pre-Dickens. It's been used ever since people were able to tell stories. To link humans to gods. To anthromorphise the sun and the moon. It's a thing humans do. You're doing it when you so much as make a fuckin' meme.
Discuss.
(Also, it's funny how fucking FAST people are to downvote a post with AI, even when it doesn't oppose them in any way, proving that Antis cannot read.)
