UK judge rules that AI image generator Stable Diffusion is not an "infringing copy"

The High Court in London has thrown out Getty Images' main copyright case against Stability AI, marking a key moment for generative AI developers. The case focused on whether building an AI model from copyrighted images counts as copyright infringement.

Getty Images accused Stability AI of "scraping" millions of its photos to train Stable Diffusion, calling it an "existential threat" to the creative industry. But Getty ended up dropping its main claims, including those about how the model was trained and the images it generates.

According to court documents, there was no evidence that model training happened in the UK. That narrowed the case to questions of secondary copyright and trademark infringement, which the court has now decided.

AI models aren't considered infringing copies

The central issue was whether Stable Diffusion itself counts as an "infringing copy" because of the way it was trained. Getty argued that Stable Diffusion was an "infringing copy" because "the making of its model weights would have constituted infringement of the Copyright Works had it been carried out in the UK."

Judge Joanna Smith disagreed. Her ruling says that an AI model like Stable Diffusion, which "does not store or reproduce any Copyright Works (and has never done so)," isn't an "infringing copy" under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA). Even though the law can cover intangible objects as "articles," Getty's argument didn't hold up.

Judge Joanna Smith concluded that an AI model like Stable Diffusion, which doesn't store or reproduce copyrighted works, isn't an "infringing copy" under UK copyright law. | Image: The Decoder

Trademark issues limited to older versions

Getty saw a small win on trademark infringement. The court found that some older versions of Stable Diffusion could create watermarks similar to Getty Images' or iStock's trademarks in certain cases.

But the judge made clear that this was limited to specific image examples, and it was "it is impossible to know how many (or even on what scale) watermarks* have been generated in real life that would fall into a similar category" that matched this pattern. The court also dismissed Getty's claims for reputational harm and said there was no basis for additional damages.