Artists Sue AI Companies for Copyright Infringement

​A group of prominent artists filed a class-action lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, Runway AI, and DeviantArt, alleging widespread copyright infringement and misuse of their creative works to train artificial intelligence image-generation models. Filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the plaintiffs say the unauthorized use of billions of copyrighted images scraped from the internet to train AI models has caused significant harm to their livelihoods as well as harm to the broader art community (Sarah Andersen, et al. ​ v. Stability AI Ltd., et al., No. 3:23-cv-00201-WHO, N.D.Calif.).

The key allegations listed in the complaint are:

Copyright Infringement: The plaintiffs allege that the defendants made unauthorized copies of their works during the training process and distributed infringing AI models to the public. ​

DMCA Violations: The lawsuit claims that the defendants removed or altered copyright-management information (CMI) from the plaintiffs’ works and falsely attributed copyright to the AI models. ​

Lanham Act Violations: Midjourney is accused of creating confusion among consumers by using artists’ names to advertise its AI image generator, implying false endorsement and misappropriating trade dress. ​

Unjust Enrichment: The plaintiffs argue that the defendants profited from the unauthorized use of their works, depriving them of the value of their creations. ​

The lawsuit also targets DeviantArt for its role in facilitating the misuse of artists’ works. ​ DeviantArt’s AI image-generation tool, DreamUp, is based on Stable Diffusion, which was trained on images scraped from DeviantArt’s platform. ​ The plaintiffs allege that DeviantArt breached its terms of service by using members’ works to develop and promote DreamUp without their consent. ​

The plaintiffs seek damages, restitution of profits, and injunctive relief to prevent further infringement. They argue that the defendants’ actions have caused significant harm to their careers, reputations, and the broader art market. ​

This case will be one of the first to test the intersection of copyright law and artificial intelligence.