Artists Unite in Lawsuit Against AI Image Generators for Massive Copyright Violations
A lawsuit has been filed against two artificial intelligence (AI) image generation companies, Stability AI and Midjourney, for alleged massive copyright violations. The class-action suit, which was first filed in early 2023, claims that these AI image generators violate the rights of millions of artists.
The complaint alleges that Stability AI and other companies downloaded billions of copyrighted images, including those of the plaintiffs, to train their AI models without obtaining consent or compensating the artists. Artists such as Sarah Andersen, Karla Ortiz, and Gerald Brom have joined the lawsuit, which now includes around 4,700 names of artists and art styles that were included in the training corpus for Midjourney.
According to the amended complaint, Midjourney’s CEO, David Holz, shared a Google sheet on the company’s Discord server that included a tab called Artists. The sheet contained a list of 4,000 artist names and various art styles. Artists and their supporters have been discussing the filing after the list went viral recently.
The complaint provides technical explanations of how the image generation tool works and how Stability AI acquired its training corpus. One of the key datasets mentioned is LAION-5B, a 5.85 billion image model developed by LAION, a German nonprofit. However, it was later discovered that this dataset included instances of suspected child sexual abuse materials, leading LAION to take it down.
Artists and online communities have expressed their concerns over Midjourney’s alleged scraping of artists’ images and discussions of creating a database of artists based on their artistic styles. Some artists have highlighted the need for legal representation and have urged their colleagues to take action if they find themselves on the list.
The lawsuit aims to address the unauthorized use of copyrighted images and seek appropriate compensation for the affected artists. The case raises important questions about the ethical and legal boundaries of AI image generation and the protection of artists’ rights in the digital age.
With the ongoing developments in this lawsuit and the growing attention it has received from artists and the public at large, it remains to be seen how the courts will address the complex issues surrounding AI-generated content and copyright infringement.
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