Cartoonist and illustrator Sarah Andersen is advancing a direct copyright infringement claim against Stability AI, maker of Stable Diffusion, an AI image synthesis tool. Andersen's case could impact all artists and she has about a month to amend her complaint to show which specific copyrighted images were used to train AI models and demonstrate that those models used those specific images to create art that looks exactly like hers. However, she could fail if the court decides that using data to train AI models is fair use of artists' works, a legal question that remains unclear.
Key takeaways:
- Artists have been fighting against companies that use their original works to train AI image generators without consent or compensation. The US has pledged to address these copyright concerns, with President Joe Biden signing an executive order on AI.
- The US Copyright Office will publish the results of its study on AI and copyright concerns, and within 180 to 270 days, the Copyright Office's director will consult with Biden to issue recommendations on potential executive actions relating to copyright and AI.
- Artists currently have limited options to prevent their works from being used to train AI models. Even companies like OpenAI, which allow artists to opt out of having works included in AI training data, only allow artists to opt out of future training data.
- Cartoonist and illustrator Sarah Andersen is advancing a direct copyright infringement claim against Stability AI, maker of Stable Diffusion. Her case could impact all artists if she can prove that specific copyrighted images were used to train AI models and that those models used those specific images to create art that looks exactly like hers.