A trio of artists sue Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt over AI art copyright; a firm suing Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI over Copilot filed the lawsuit
A trio of artists have launched a lawsuit against Stability AI and Midjourney, creators of AI art generators Stable Diffusion and Midjourney …
The VergeJames Vincent
Context & Ripple Effects
The artists’ case emerged from shared concerns about generative-image systems, documented in coverage of how the three artists came together to challenge the companies. It was quickly joined by a separate Getty Images claim alleging that Stability AI used more than 12 million images without permission or compensation, placing Stability AI at the center of multiple training-data disputes.
The litigation later produced a differentiated result: a judge [[a:845739|dismissed claims against Midjourney and DeviantArt while allowing a Stability AI claim to proceed]], and a subsequent ruling let the artists pursue some claims. That progression makes the initial filing an early test of how allegations against image-model developers and platforms would be assessed separately.
First-order effects
Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt must defend an artist-led copyright suit over their roles in AI image generation, while the filing firm extends a legal challenge already aimed at Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI’s Copilot.
The suit places Stability AI under immediate added legal pressure alongside Getty Images’ separate US lawsuit over alleged image copying for Stable Diffusion training.
Second-order effects
The later split in the case gives image-model developers and hosting platforms different litigation exposures: allegations against Stability AI survived where claims against Midjourney and DeviantArt were dismissed.
Copyright plaintiffs gain a visible litigation route spanning both code-generation and image-generation products, increasing the importance of distinguishing a company’s training, model, and platform roles.
Third-order effects
If courts continue to allow targeted claims over training data to proceed, generative-AI vendors will face a more segmented market in which legal risk depends on their specific role in sourcing data and commercializing outputs.
The dispute points toward copyright law becoming a practical constraint on AI content commercialization, rather than a single industry-wide verdict on generative models.
The trend: Generative-AI copyright fights are evolving from broad challenges to model training into company-specific tests of responsibility across developers and platforms.
Here is the formal complaint in the Lawsuit against Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and DeviantArt on behalf of Karla Ortiz, Sarah Anderson and Kelly Mckernan. https://stablediffusionlitigation.com/ Links for pdf of complaint (with violations and exhibits above) #CreateDontScrape #a…
Can we just take a bit of time to fully dismantle this argument? It's a straw-man. Emad tries to justify violating the consent of artists and creators worldwide by virtue signalling. It's concealing the fact that making open/ custom/ personal AI is possible without violation. htt…
Putting aside $$s for a moment is there anyone who would rather have the next generation using closed, centralised, corporate-aligned AI versus open, customised and personally-aligned AI? It's a choice we can make right now at the start of this crazy takeoff 🛫 🚀 🌟
The team behind the Copilot litigation files a class-action lawsuit against Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney. Complaint here. https://stablediffusionlitigation.com/ ...
I'm incredibly pleased to share my involvement in a class action lawsuit representing hundreds, if not thousands, of working artists whose life's work have been unethically scraped to train in AI image generators.
2/ I am proud to be one of the plaintiffs named for this class action suit. I am proud to do this with fellow peers, that we'll give a voice to potentially thousands of affected artists. I'm proud that now we fight for our rights not just in the public sphere but in the courts!
3/ I am in awe of the excellent, efficient and detailed work of Joseph Saveri, Cadio Zirpoli, Travis Manfredi at the Joseph Saveri Law Firm and Matthew Butterick! They've brought up a hell of a case! I cannot wait to see them in action. We couldn't have chosen better fighters!
I remember early on when Midjourney started taking off I saw a reddit comment that was like “Now instead of colors, entire artists will be the pigments we use to create art” and thinking it was one of the most sickening, cynical things I'd ever read https://twitter.com/...
There is definitely going to be an influx of AI dislike generally (and AI art hatred especially) with the new legal situation that was just revealed recently. Probably one of the most intense cycles to date. Take breaks. Take care of you. And know that you are not alone ✨
Looks to me like that class action against stable diffusion, midjourney and others is showing a blatant misunderstanding of their inner workings. If anyone they would either have to sue OpenAI for CLIP or LAION since those are the 3rd party components trained on the actual data.
Pretty embarrasing post, regardless of the ethical validity of the lawsuit: 1. Midjourney doesn't use Stable Diffusion 2. Calling Diffusion models a “collage tool” shows little to no understanding of the tech Artists deserve better representation than this. #AIArtwork #ai https:/…
MidJourney, Stability AI, and DeviantArt are now being sued in a class action lawsuit for using copyright art without permission for profit. https://twitter.com/...
Best news I've heard in a long time!!! I have nothing but admiration and immense respect for this team and these wonderful artists. I believe in justice but no matter what happens I'll remain grateful for the fact they fought for all of us. Thank you ❤️ https://stablediffusionlit…
It's very telling of their strategy that the Stable Diffusion lawsuit doesn't mention OpenAI at all given the historical sequence of facts they argue. https://stablediffusionlitigation.com/
My own artwork, that I paid to register with the US copyright office, was stolen by LAION to use in a dataset that these multimillion dollar tech companies are using to rip off my work. Thousands upon thousands of artists are in the same boat.
This is a pretty good summary of the misconceptions present in the Stable Diffusion/MidJourney/DeviantArt lawsuit. There may yet be an angle to show someone is liable for violating the rights of specific artists in training data, but this isn't it. https://www.stablediffusionfriv…
Regardless of the technical misunderstanding or misrepresentation: this Stable Diffusion lawsuit https://www.stablediffusionfrivolous.co m/ is definitely something to watch. It touches on a lot of legally vague and currently murky legal interpretations of things to do with ML mod…
An annotated version of the lawsuit over Stable Diffusion with intuitive explanations of the weird technical processes. “...the author [of the complaint] has no conception at all of how diffusion models work.” https://www.stablediffusionfrivolous.co m/
1/ As I learned more about how the deeply exploitative AI media models practices I realized there was no legal precedent to set this right. Let's change that. Read more about our class action lawsuit, including how to contact the firm here: https://stablediffusionlitigation.com/
This seems very different from the information I've learned about this process. Although if I squinted I could see how this might be analogous I'm skeptical this language is accurate. Any thoughts? https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
A class action lawsuit against Stable Diffusion, with three illustrators as plaintiffs and DeviantArt as one of the defendants? Could get messy, but might help hash out authorship in AI and what's acceptable AI practice. https://stablediffusionlitigation.com/ https://twitter.com/…
What had to happen, is happening. Hopefully this kind of actions (likely not the last) will open cases for a more thorough legal framework and saner uses of generative AIs. Until we have that framework, I'd recommend to not use them (even in derivative form) in production. https:…
There's finally a class action lawsuit challenging Stable Diffusion, the tool that big tech companies built on all our stolen artwork. I could not be more thrilled. @SarahCAnderson, @Kelly_McKernan and @kortizart, you are champions for all illustrators https://stablediffusionliti…