Getty Images has accused Stability AI Inc. of using more than 12 million photographs from the Getty Images collection, alongside associated captions, and metadata, without permission or proper payment to Getty Images, as part of Stability AI’s efforts to build a competing business.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Delaware, alleges multiple violations: copyright infringement, false copyright management information, removal or alteration of copyright management information, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair competition, and deceptive trade practices.

According to Getty Images, Stability AI also recreates Getty Image’s watermarks, decreases the quality of the images, and uses the image-caption pairing feature to train the Stability AI system. Getty has asked the court to order Stability AI to stop using the photos immediately and compensate Getty Images for the unauthorized use of its photos.

Moreover, major media outlets in the United States have accused OpenAI and its ChatGPT software of using their articles to train the AI tool without permission or payment. According to the media outlet’s complaint, a license is required to use their journalistic works.

News organizations are not the first to question how their content is used impermissibly by artificial intelligence systems. In November, GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI were sued in a complaint alleging that GitHub’s Copilot tool was essentially plagiarizing the code created by human developers in violation of the applicable licenses.

Click here to read complaint in Getty Images (US), Inc. v Stability AI, Inc.