Judge bins AI copyright lawsuit against DeviantArt, Midjourney – Stability still in the mix
- Reference: 1698783446
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/10/31/judge_copyright_stabilityai_deviantart_midjourney/
- Source link:
In January, three artists - Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz - [1]sued the three aforementioned startups, accusing the businesses of using people's copyrighted artwork without permission to build text-to-image AI tools.
The artists [2]argued the startups not only made unauthorized copies of people's art when collecting up images and training neural networks on those pictures, but also the content generated by those models – incorporating themes, elements, and styles created by human artists – was unlawful derivative work.
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It was therefore claimed humans were being unfairly [4]ripped off . The trio sued DeviantArt and Midjourney, which built text-to-image tools based on Stability's open source Stable Diffusion software, as well as Stability as well.
[5]
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On Monday federal district Judge William Orrick in San Francisco dismissed all copyright violation claims made by McKernan and Ortiz since neither of them registered their work with the US Copyright Office. He decided, however, to keep Andersen's case going.
Her allegations against DeviantArt and Midjourney, however, were also thrown out. Judge Orrick said the cartoonist and illustrator had failed to show how those two defendants had directly infringed upon her rights, considering they didn't scrape any images nor train Stable Diffusion themselves.
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Instead, the training dataset was collected by LAION, a non-profit organization that reportedly scraped public images from the internet at the direction of Stability, who then went on to develop Stable Diffusion using that data. For that reason, Judge Orrick threw out the case against DeviantArt and Midjourney but not Stability for Anderson.
"The motions to dismiss are granted in full, except for the direct copyright infringement claim asserted by plaintiff Anderson against Stability," he ruled
[8]PDF
, referring to the defendants' efforts to have the proposed class-action suit binned."Plaintiffs are given leave to amend and attempt to cure the deficiencies. The amended complaint, if any, must be filed within thirty days of the date of this order," he said.
[9]Midjourney, DeviantArt face lawsuit over AI-made art
[10]Judge lets art trio take another crack at suing AI devs over copyright
[11]Bad Vibrations: Music publishers sue Anthropic AI for using copyrighted lyrics
[12]Google offers some copyright indemnity to users of its generative AI services
Orrick advised the artists to clarify whether their cases against DeviantArt and Midjourney are based on both companies' use of Stable Diffusion, or their own custom products, or both. He also cast doubt on whether it was possible to claim that every image in LAION training dataset was copyrighted, and that all AI-generated outputs are unlawful derivatives of images.
"Even if that clarity is provided and even if plaintiffs narrow their allegations to limit them to output images that draw upon training images based upon copyrighted images, I am not convinced that copyright claims based [on] a derivative theory can survive absent 'substantial similarity' type allegations," he said.
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In short, Orrick doesn't seem to be persuaded by their arguments that AI-generated outputs are merely derivatives of images, even if they are based on copyrighted works; they may not be similar enough to original images to meet the legal standard needed for infringement claims.
The fight goes on
The plaintiffs' lawyers confirmed to The Register they would be filing an amended complaint.
"Judge Orrick sustained the plaintiffs' core claim pertaining to direct copyright infringement by Stability AI, so that claim is now on a path to trial," lawyers Matthew Butterick and Joseph Saveri told The Register in a statement.
"As is common in a complex case, Judge Orrick granted the plaintiffs permission to amend most of their other claims. We're confident that we can address the Court's concerns. We will be filing an amended complaint in November. In the meantime, discovery in the case is proceeding."
Stability AI, which is now firmly in the legal cross-hairs, told The Register it believes it has a legitimate business model.
"We are committed to putting Stability AI’s tools in the hands of every day creators through open models that uphold the highest standards of fairness, safety, and legality," it said.
"We acknowledge that AI raises important questions about the integration of these models and tools in our everyday lives. While we don’t have all the answers, we remain focused on developing the best open models for our millions of users worldwide through open and constructive dialogue, innovative technologies, and best practices in the application of fair, competitive, and practical rules governing AI development."
The Register has also asked DeviantArt and Midjourney for comment. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/16/stability_diffusion_lawsuit/
[2] https://stablediffusionlitigation.com/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZUGHEsMVaIKB7IlKWqqmCgAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/21/judge_ai_art/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZUGHEsMVaIKB7IlKWqqmCgAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZUGHEsMVaIKB7IlKWqqmCgAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZUGHEsMVaIKB7IlKWqqmCgAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/10/31/ai_copyright_dismissal.pdf
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/16/stability_diffusion_lawsuit/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/21/judge_ai_art/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/20/music_publishers_sue_anthropic/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/google_ai_protection/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZUGHEsMVaIKB7IlKWqqmCgAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I do feel sorry for them
I can imagine if I was Sarah and I saw people giving prompts to LLMs like "draw me a cartoon in the style of Sarah Andersen about not wanting to get out of bed on a Sunday morning" and the model producing comic strips just like mine, I'd reach for a lawyer too. That's got to be some form of copying or adaption?
Re: I do feel sorry for them
The problem is that copyright law only protects a person's specifc works, it doesn't protect their style, ideas or any other single aspect of the works. The law as it stands simply doesn't protect against what these generative algorithms actually do, and these plaintiffs would be better off campaigning for a change in copyright law than fighting this case on the existing law as it stands. And no, I'm not being naive - I know exactly how hard that campaign would be. That's how certain I am that the law isn't on their side in this case.
copy and distribute
@Veti I agree with both your points 1 and 2. Yet I don't think they are on a losing track. Stability AI and LAION break point 2, both copy and distribute. LAION copies and then supplies (distribute) to Stability AI and Stability AI make copies to train their AI.
How is that any different from a human copying a book in a public library giving the copy to a teacher who makes copies as teaching material for their students.
Re: copy and distribute
It wasn't clear from the article if Stability AI or LAION actually supply copies of images or merely if they create some kind of metadata that they then pass on.
It is quite interesting to debate the difference between that activity and a human looking at an image and learning from it which is clearly what they are doing in practice.
> I am not convinced that copyright claims based [on] a derivative theory can survive absent 'substantial similarity' type allegations," he said.
The judge also seems to be saying that they would have to prove that the various systems output images that a reasonable person would think of as a copy by being substantially similar. I don't think people can claim copyright over original images "in the style of" some other artist, notwithstanding the legal issues with passing off of course.
Re: copy and distribute
How is that any different from a human copying a book in a public library giving the copy to a teacher who makes copies as teaching material for their students.
Can't speak for any other jurisdiction, but copyright law in Oz allows teachers to copy a single chapter or 10% of a book (whichever is greater) for use in the classroom.
1. The only legal standard that makes any kind of sense is, "if it would be illegal for a human to do it, it's also illegal for a computer system to do it, otherwise it's fine".
2. Nothing in copyright law allows rightsholders to place any restrictions on who or what can study and learn from their work. As long as they don't (copy, perform, distribute, adapt or translate) it, they're golden.
I'm sorry for the artists, but they're on a losing track here.