GETTY IMAGES V STABILITY AI: COPYRIGHT LAW MEETS GENERATIVE AI

AUTHOR – HARINI VENKATESH, STUDENT AT SCHOOL OF LAW, CHRIST (DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY), BANGALORE

BEST CITATION – HARINI VENKATESH, GETTY IMAGES V STABILITY AI: COPYRIGHT LAW MEETS GENERATIVE AI, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 6 (2) OF 2026, PG. 722-726, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.

The fast growth of artificial intelligence has ignited one of the most significant legal issues in this age of technology: whether or not it is copyright infringement to use copyrighted recordings for the purpose of training artificial intelligence.  Courts around the world are now being called on to determine if machine learning technologies are covered under the historically traditional laws of Copyright.

One of the earliest to reach a legal determination regarding this issue is the case of Getty Images (US) Inc v Stability AI Ltd before the High Court of England and Wales.

The dispute began when Getty Images accused Stability AI of illegally using millions of its copyrighted photographs from its large database to train its generative AI model, Stable Diffusion.  The case pitted the creative industries, who rely upon copyright protection, against the creators of artificial intelligence machines, who used large collections of data sets to train their machines.

While the proceedings generated significant concern regarding AI training practices, there was not much in the way of an overall decision in respect of AI training infringements. The Court dealt principally with questions of secondary copyright violations or trademark infringement; however, did leave the core question of whether AI training in and of itself constitutes Copyright infringement; this was not really answered at all. The case is significant as it represents an early attempt by the Courts to assess the legal status of AI models with relation to the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.