Today, the United States Court Northern District of California responded to the motions to dismiss issued by companies pushing generative AI against a class action lawsuit filed by a group of artists.
The lawsuit was filed by artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, Karla Ortiz, Hawke Southworth, Grzegorz Rutkowski, Gregory Manchess, Gerald Brom, Jingna Zhang, Julia Kaye, and Adam Ellis against companies that created or use the Stable Diffusion generative AI software.
Among the defendants are Stability AI (the creators of Stable Diffusion), Midjourney, DeviantArt, and Runway AI.
The order issued today by Judge William H. Orrick granted with prejudice the motion to dismiss the DMCA claims against the defendants and DeviantArt’s motion to dismiss the breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing claims. If you’re not familiar with legal lingo, “with prejudice” means that these claims can’t be presented again and are pretty much gone from the proceedings.
The motion to dismiss the Unjust Enrichment claim was also granted, but with leave to amend, which means that the plaintiff can correct their claim and present it again.
On the other hand, the motions to dismiss the claims of infringement of the Copyright Act and Lanham Act (which protects trademarks) have been Denied.
While not all claims have survived the judge’s scrutiny, the fact that some remain means that the lawsuit is now likely to go to trial. This is a relevant win for those opposing generative AI “art,” as it’s now probable that the companies involved will be compelled to make public many documents and data during the discovery phase, breaking the wall of secrecy that many generative AI companies have been building to protect the training of their models.
If you’re not familiar with Stable Diffusion, it’s one of the most widespread generative AI software applications that produces images based on text prompts, and it’s at at the forefront of the spread of “AI Art” over the past couple of years.
This lawsuit is part of an extensive pushback against the use of generative AI spanning several major lawsuits and more initiatives.
If you’re interested in technology, you can read our recent article about the Metaverse and VR.
