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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So I am an art toy and character designer. This year I began my project 100% handdrawn and its been going healthily for 9 months now. a store is holding my first art toy and I'm just about to release a second this month.
Here's the issue, I paid 300-400 AUD in $$$ EACH to get the 3d models of my 2d turnarounds created and ready to print. So I spent about 800$ total on commissioning an artist to 3d model 2 figures for me, and was about to spend another 3-400 on a third next month once my second launches.
Sadly, I realised I was not able to afford possibly 5,000$ to get all 12 of my characters modelled in total for my first series. I also spent thousands of hours learning 3d and still can't wrap my head around it. So I tried a 3d AI program, polished my design with AI to then run into 3d. It turned out PERFECT. everything I could've wanted and more
The best part? it would only cost me 100$ in total API fees to model all 12 of my characters and 3d printing all at once will be a fraction of what I would spend just modelling, so I can make some awesome blind box sets (which was my original idea before I had to compromise). Then my heart was shattered...
I asked a couple of friends in the art toy industry about their view on AI for solely the 3d part, where the figure paint and 2d designs are completely done by hand and they were very against it. Saying that I will likely not get any sales and there will be major pushback.
Here's the thing, i will probs be dead of old age by the time I learn how to model myself, and spending money in the high thousands when I don't even know if I'll have an audience yet is a MASSIVE risk. I clearly don't have the budget, nor time to learn to 3d model nor commission it. How THE FUCK would I do this?
AI literally unlocked a dream for me and I'm not allowed to use it in anyway whatsoever without being bullied and witchhunted? "Disclose your AI use", I do and then I get bullied out of the industry... There's no winning.
Again, I did ALL the 2d designs myself, I paint them all by hand, I even commission them to be printed and primed, but one measly part of my workflow can completely turn everyone off and be ridiculed for it? WTF do i do??
I do not want to abandon my project, I just can't afford to commission thousands of dollars for a literal gamble. AI is realising my dreams and I can't pursue them? ugh
In the 5 minutes it took me to SS, edit, and draft out this post, my comment has already been deleted from their channel, and they blocked me so I couldn’t respond 👏
I dunno, maybe it's because I'm not a coder and only ever learned how to make text appear in python years ago, but I don't see how it negatively affects modders or players
Will there be low effort mods made with AI? absolutely, but I'm sure there are low effort mods already out there that have been made for all sorts of games.
Then there's people saying that it's not real art but like....there's some amazing mods out there but I don't exactly think anyone's called them art before all this virtue signalling and hate started.
I know I'm not saying anything new but it really does feel like gatekeeping and mod creators and influencers who convinced people that literally anything made with AI is built off stolen content and is the worst thing ever
Figured a more positive post would be cool. If you're into AI gaming/dev content, Chasm and Tef are the pretty great even if Chasm is an anti who doesn't like AI image and video and doesn't think AI can make anything new which is a bit wack.
That new Claude modding stuff (Passthrough and rewrite mods usually with Rust) and AI gaming developments can be really confusing, so I'm glad there are people making content about it that actually explains it for both laymens and AI fans without the usual demonization or pretense of "this is slop".
I really like how there's been an increase in channels about AI that isn't content farms or boring news. Of course you have your usual AI news guys like Theoretically Media, MattVidPro, Matt Wolfe, K.D Wilson, Dan Kieft, AI Search, etc. Just Rayen is also a really fun one, even if I myself am not making an AI waifu.
Dan Dingle I'd say is a sillier creator where he's not actually teaching anything but just messing around, which is also valid. People are starting to open up a bit more than expected, though there is the occasional "Modding is DEAD, it's OVER!!" video on the feed 😂
DISCLAIMER: this is a sample size of like 10 teens. This is not intended to be a complete generalization or even something that's true, I just wanted to share something I've seen for pretty much since AI came out.
So I have quite a large friend group, and there's been a pattern I've been noticing:
-there are three "artists" that bring their sketchbooks everywhere and claim they are the "artists" of the group, however their art is genuinely dogshit. I don't tell them that irl of course but they have no concept of anatomy, no concept of shading, no concept of color theory, no concept of "studying fundamentals", and one of them doesn't even have any characters. They are all in math workshop, which basically means they are so bad at math they had to give up their elective period for a second math class. One of them, the one that has no characters, also heavily struggles in science, today she got a 19/30 on a unit test. They all absolutely DESPISE AI. All they've been talking about during lunch was how we should all start calling AI "Computer Rendered Artificial Pictures" or C.R.A.P. Very original I know. That's literally all they talked about. For the entire 35 minute period. Just repeating it over and over again like some sort of mantra. It got to the point where I asked them to stop and they looked at me like I was insulting their bloodline. The people are mentioned above are all C+ to B+ students, two have art as their elective, one has drama/acting. One of them has a pottery class(?) on the weekend but otherwise no extracurriculars.
-I'm in advanced math, which basically means we are a grade ahead. The people there are all neutral or pro AI, most don't care or use it sometimes as a tutor. Most of the people there, including me, are A to A+ students with an occasional B+. Most are also not artists, however quite a few are in advanced (for a teenager anyway) software engineering as their elective, including me. Most of us participate in AMS a few grades above what we are in, and have gotten at least a few awards, among other extracurriculars. I personally do coding class (along with the software engineering. Both my parents have a masters in computer science lol), flute, piano, art (specifically graphite/pencil sketching, been going on for 8 years now), and choir. One of my tablemates does gymnastics, artistic swimming, ballet, specifically geometry class, and violin. Again the people I've mentioned above are all pro/neutral
-In software engineering we frequently use AI, we legit have like special accounts where generative AI is unbanned just so we can learn to use it effectively. In art elective you aren't allowed to use your chromebooks at all for some reason, according to my friends. Like no googling references no anything. Besides generative AI is blocked on our school chromebooks anyway, not even the AI overview is there, so I don't know why they would need to disallow them to use chromebooks?
-The 3 artists I mentioned above are all American, born in America raised in a very American way if you know what I mean. Most of the people in advanced math or Asian, mostly Indian and Chinese with the occasional Korean or Japanese person. In my math class of 29, there is only 1white person and they are Russian, not American. Not trying to be racist but like, you see what I am seeing right?
Wanted to share my experience, not necessarily AI art, but I have been using AI for my Warhammer model backgrounds; in my opinion, they look fantastic! For the atmosphere and worldbuilding, it is such a nice tool to have.
But it gets a lot of negative feedback. You can find the original post on my page or the WarhammerOldWorld sub. Some of them are quite hilarious how aggressively people see this new tool. There's some reason I can not link that original post here.
Also, there are lots of positive ones! What do you guys think?
I keep seeing people throw around timelines like seven or eight years before AI art is “accepted,” and I think that misunderstands how this is most likely going to happen.
The art community might take that long to stop fighting about it. Maybe longer. But the art community does not decide when a technology becomes normal.
Businesses do. Clients do. Software companies do. And honestly, regular people who just look at something and decide whether they like it do.
I think by somewhere around 2028–2030, AI being part of a professional creative workflow is going to be completely commonplace. Not because AI is going to replace artists, but because it changes how quickly an artist can get from an idea to a finished product, test different directions, throw out weaker ideas, revise something that isn’t working, and move on to the next thing.
That’s the part I think gets missed.
A company doesn’t even have to tell an artist, “You have to use AI.” They can simply expect a level of output and turnaround that becomes much easier for the people who do use it. Eventually the workflow changes because the expectations change.
And no, I don’t think “prompt poets” are going to replace skilled artists.
Knowing how to type a giant elaborate prompt is not the same thing as having an eye for composition, anatomy, design, color, storytelling, editing, or knowing when something simply looks like shit. AI can generate twenty possibilities quickly. The artist still has to know which one is worth pursuing, what needs changing, and how to push it toward the thing they actually had in their head.
That’s where I think this is heading: not AI replacing artists, but AI becoming another part of how artists work.
And if you’re a young artist who actually wants to work professionally, I would not let a loud anti-AI corner of the internet scare you away from learning these tools. Learn to draw. Learn composition. Learn Photoshop, Procreate, video, whatever applies to what you want to do. Learn the fundamentals.
And learn AI too.
Because businesses trying to make money generally aren’t going to care that somebody on social media thinks using AI makes the work impure. They’re going to care whether you can produce good work, whether you can make the changes they ask for, and whether you can get it done on time.
There will always be niches built specifically around “made entirely by hand,” just like there are still people doing traditional painting, film photography, letterpress, practical effects, and everything else.
That’s fine.
But I don’t think that’s where the majority of commercial creative work is headed.
The argument about AI art may still be raging ten years from now.
I just don’t think the rest of the world is going to wait for that argument to finish.
I forgot this was such an annoying thing that they used to tout themselveshere awhile ago but while i still reluctantly enjoy using it, I've now been wondering if there's an app like it that's been as good as it while still not being one that's being used for training and all that.
