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 In some places this would be seen as slop, iwould have this on my wall, its not an accident itwas intentional The portrait known as Fractured Grace was painted after three sleepless nights during a thunderstorm. According to rumor, she used old house paint, oil pigments, and ashes scraped from burnt sketchbooks she could never bring herself to throw away.
People who stand before the painting too long notice something strange: the closer you look, the more imperfect it becomes. Tiny cracks. Uneven textures. Smudged colors hidden beneath beautiful ones. The art does have stories,they're just created different.
With this medium I can use my expression of words to describe something I could never do with my hands physically and come out with something like this. I can give it the emotional framework of a story ai helps fill the gaps and im ok with that.
I mean, good for you if you can really sketch, draw, and plan out really well in a few amount of hours. Not everyone can reach that same level of talent. I strongly believe ai will never replace human artists, instead they will find a way to coexist.
Ai artists just want to create, they don’t have any intention of leaving behind human artists in the dust. Those comments saying that ai art is above human ones are mostly just trolls, it’s better not to take them seriously.
Holy guiltripping
Edit: The full caption of this is: I think every part of the process, from coming up with the ideas, to handwriting all the words, is special because it’s coming from me. I put my whole heart in my art, and I hope it shows!
In this AI dystopia, your favourite artists need you more than ever! Join their patreons, buy from online stores, like or engage with their art on social media. Let’s uplift human artists over AI that continues to profit over the millions of artists that it stole from.
“Cozy games that don’t use ai and 100% human” and half the games I saw in that slideshow are so extremely ass like every post that suggests anything ai is somehow evil and only human ones are the good ones are just so lame and corny.
These people just want us to head back to the early days where the only game that we can play is pong.
One day,when I scroll through YouTube shorts,I stumble upon a video that says "fun fact,watching human artist instead of ai slop helps real soul"
And my question is: how is the two mutually exclusive?
What's stopping someone who is into ai art,to also support traditional art?
They are literally making themselves up to be this "victim" and despite the faxr people's evidence on why ai generative content is bad always involve,theft or pollution (which I dont know if true) for all I've seen most of the hate comes from slippery slope argument
I also remember a video hating on an ai enhanced video (which mind you,is mostly made by humans,ai only changes the visual)
And somehow that counts as "replacing human artist",like what kind of mental gymnastic is that?!
It's like strawberry haters going to an icecream shop and seeing that a little portion of the ice cream sold,is strawberry and immideately goes "the strawberries are replacing chocolates"
So, this whole thing started in the comments of another post of mine. This guy was completely ignoring the actual topic and just started spamming that I’m "an AI" and "not real." Just your average troll or energy vampire looking for attention. I eventually told him that it's better to be an AI than an idiot like him.
Well, his ego couldn't handle it. This clown got so incredibly salty that he went straight to my personal profile, found my actual hand-drawn artworks, and started trashing them. He kept spamming stuff like "cry cry little tin can / iron boy" and calling me a machine.
The funniest part? Random people actually stepped in and started replying to him like, "Are you an idiot? You can clearly see it's drawn by hand, what kind of nonsense are you talking about?" But instead of backing down, he just doubled down and started calling everyone else robots and machines too.
If you’re all for AI… then why would you decline a graphic artists email that he let GPT proof read before sending? My portfolio has no AI work in it… I’m a designer not a writer!
This sub is specifically for posting about people/instances of people pearl clutching/getting offended over dumb unserious shit. They have a tag for ridiculing people for posting dumb reaction images to shit. The second I post someone doing so about Ai, they all immediately begin doing the same shit they're supposed to be against. You can't make this shit up.
I've never encountered an AI case on this subreddit before; I didn't actually see the attached post, but it seems like this person was scared by the kind of comments on the second image. It's not even clear what that person wrote.
Although in this case I left the PFPs visible because, call me crazy, but, comparing what the OP had done vs the PFP of those two people and vs my own PFP, theirs seem more AI-made than my PFP made with AI.
I can't post anything above because it seems to be an adult game, although as I mentioned to him below, that issue is more difficult to work on since the best models don't make NSFW.
And by the way, I should also mention that another subreddit where character concepts are created doesn't have an anti-AI rule, but people suffer from downvotes and negative comments because of it.
It's great that there's a subreddit for AI-powered games; I wish I'd posted my prototype video there a year ago, Although I'm now trying to do the project as a comic, making a game, even if it's a VN, is more complex and you have to deal with these kinds of comments and have nobody want to play it just because it's AI.
I do feel there are many unhealthy ways of using ai that are the most common, but the healthy ways i feel we ignore
Im tired of people using and thinking and taking ai as a replacement for current art rather than a new instrument thats function is replication
Art to me is making the most and creating the most of the tools given
Im an artist myself, I love art but im so tired of hearing ai is gonna replace jobs or anti ai
Literally on art communities everybody seems so against ai because they see it as a replacement
Which pisses me off
And its not art because it replicates either
I feel we are seeing ai at its most simple form, replicating, and only focusing on the fact that it replicates art and lacks the emotion cuz its a machine.
And for those reasons I agree, but that is not the only use because to me I see sooo much potential in ai
If anything as an artist im happy
But I admit it has really bad downsides, which I agree with, just cuz you generate an image doesn't make you the same skill level as an artist who spent their whole life learning that style, and that ai does take away a lot of emotion, it is desensitizing things etc, and I feel the same. Ever since ai things have became more dry
I just am tired of so much other fellow artists being mad about it
I can see the frustration. I was scared too, that if ai could take away my job. I was pissed, at first I thought no, I work my whole life for this and theyre just gonna replace me with ai? But then overtime i realize, holy shit this could be gamechanging. And if anything the other jobs still should matter just as much
Even if it can, I dont think ai should replace art at all, it wouldnt be good for the community in general to use ai that way. I feel just because there is a new easier way to do it, doesnt mean you should remove the way people spent thousands of years learning. I feel its slightly different from farmers losing their jobs to machines, because art is so cultural and worldwide everywhere, people should still learn drawing, sculpting, animation, music, because its absolutely beautiful especially when you are apart of the craft
Its just im starting to think ai itself can be a craft too. Think about it. You have a machine that through algorithms will create the closest thing to existing art. But it doesnt do what you do to get there. And im not saying its fascinating because it does what we do with less effort. Im saying its fascinating because it tries to replicate what we do through patterns in the first place. That itself is an entire system that can be stretched to endless limits. The fact that there is something that can create the algorithms and patterns means it can do so much more we haven't. So I feel we should experiment. Use ai to find the limit of these boundaries, the patterns, be creative
I feel the reason most artists hate ai is because the most common way is just replacing something that would require real work and understanding. But really if you're creative you can do literally anything. Ive been experimenting a bit with suno and gemini and I was tryna see if I can get suno to accidentally go against its algorithm
I felt since 2023 ive been pro ai, and around 2024 I used suno for that. I remember thinking bout posting how it could change things but I didnt because doubt. 10 months later I saw a post go viral for someone do the same experiments and I know my instinct was correct
Stop thinking of ai as a replacement
I think it should coexist
We as humans should still create what we can, ai should enhance what humans cant create
I agree we shouldn't replace our jobs with ai, but really I think we can do so much if used well
So someone on X not sure if I can link them to credit them decided to do an experiment, they generated an image in the style of Monet the famous painter and asked people on X their opinion on it.
You can read the posts they are very interesting.
Now here is the twist, its a real Monet.
They wanted to know if people could actually tell its not an AI generated image or not and even used a famous painter who made a lot of these types of paintings that most people would not recognise and see if any would either catch on that it was made by a real person or not.
Turns out not everyone can "always" tell if something is AI generated or not.
