'Extraordinarily Expensive': Getty Images Is Pouring Millions of Dollars Into One AI Lawsuit, CEO Says

Key Points

• Getty Images CEO says fighting Stability AI’s copyright lawsuit is costing “millions and millions” and is “extraordinarily expensive.”
• Getty alleges Stability AI illegally scraped over 12 million copyrighted images to train Stable Diffusion and is seeking $1.7 billion in damages.
• The lawsuit is filed in both the US and the UK, with an initial trial set for June 9 to determine if “temporary copying” is legal.
• Stability AI argues its model’s “temporary copying” produces new images without replicating originals, but Getty labels the practice unfair competition and theft.

Getty's CEO says it is costing the company millions of dollars to fight a leading AI firm in court over alleged copyright infringement.

In January 2023, Getty Images launched a lawsuit against Stability AI, the company behind a popular text-to-image generator, Stable Diffusion. Getty, one of the world's largest stock photo companies, alleged that Stability AI illegally scraped more than 12 million copyright-protected photos, videos, and illustrations from its website to train its AI image generator.

Now, Getty CEO Craig Peters says that though he believes Getty has a "very strong" case against Stability AI, fighting the AI company in court has been costly.

"We're spending millions and millions of dollars in one court case," Peters told CNBC on Wednesday, calling the effort "extraordinarily expensive."

Related: Getty Images Has Started Legal Proceedings Against an AI Generative Art Company For Copyright Infringement

Peters said that though copyright infringements happen every week, Getty is selectively choosing to fight against Stability AI in court because "the courts are just prohibitively expensive" to pursue every infringement.

^{Craig Peters, CEO of Getty Images. Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media}

AI image generators are popular. Emad Mostaque, Stability AI's CEO until March 2024, told Bloomberg in October 2022 that Stable Diffusion had more than 10 million daily users, and that people tapped into the AI image generator for everything from designing apps to creating slideshows. As of April 2024, one in five Americans were using AI to create images and videos.

Peters accused Stability AI of stealing Getty's copyright-protected material to develop AI models as part of a competing business. He said that AI companies are making the argument that paying for access to creative works would "kill innovation" by raising costs, but argues that taking copyrighted work without permission or compensation is really stealing.

"We're not against competition," Peters told CNBC. "But that's just unfair competition, that's theft."

Stability AI argues that its AI model was trained on Getty Images through "temporary copying," which is momentarily copying the picture to train the dataset. However, the AI company argues that its AI ultimately creates new pictures and does not replicate its training content in the final images it generates. In short, the end AI-generated image has no copy of the original training data. It's unclear whether temporary copying is legal, but courts are analyzing it for other generative AI cases.

Related: Getty and Shutterstock Are Merging. Here's What It Means for Creators and Businesses.

Getty is suing Stability AI in both the U.S. and the U.K. because the AI training could have taken place in either location. Getty is reportedly seeking $1.7 billion in damages, according to its latest company accounts.

The case is set for an initial trial on June 9.

In a separate case, a group of artists filed a class-action lawsuit in January 2023 against Stability AI and other AI image generator companies like Midjourney and DeviantArt, alleging copyright infringement. The artists alleged that these companies trained AI on their work without their permission. That case is moving forward to discovery.