AI firm seeks dismissal of lawsuit against accusations by group of artists over mass copyright infringement
Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt on Tuesday hit back at a group of artists who have accused them of committing mass piracy by using their work in generative AI systems.
The companies filed a complaint in federal court in San Francisco, arguing that the AI-generated images were dissimilar to the artist’s work, and that the lawsuit did not mention the specific images allegedly misused, arguing that the artist’s proposed class I asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed.
A lawyer for Midjourney declined to comment. Reps for Stability, DeviantArt, and the artist did not immediately respond when reached for comment Wednesday.
Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Carla Ortiz sued the company in January. claimed to be infringing.
In Stability’s Tuesday filing, the artist “failed to identify a single output image that was allegedly infringed, let alone one that was materially similar to any of the copyrighted works.” It is said that Midjourney’s complaint states that the lawsuit “doesn’t even identify a single work of hers by the plaintiff” that was “believed to have been used as training data.”
DeviantArt, an online artist community that allows users to create images through Stability’s Stable Diffusion system, agreed with these allegations and said it was not responsible for the AI company’s alleged misconduct.
“Even if plaintiffs’ allegations were taken at face value, DeviantArt did nothing that appeared to give rise to the alleged liability,” it said.
The case is Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd, No. 3:23-cv-00201, United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
