backOn 4 November 2025, Getty Images faced a significant setback in its lawsuit before the UK High Court against Stability AI concerning the use of its image library to train the Stable Diffusion model. Getty alleged copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that its images were used to train the system and that generated outputs replicated protected content. However, midway through the proceedings, Getty withdrew the primary copyright claim due to insufficient evidence about where the model had been trained, narrowing the broader implications of the case.
Justice Joanna Smith held that Getty succeeded only on a limited trademark claim, specifically regarding watermarks reproduced in AI-generated images. She emphasized that the ruling is “historic but extremely limited in scope.” The court dismissed the allegation of secondary copyright infringement. In a statement, Getty noted that the decision sets an important precedent by recognizing that intangible items such as AI models may be subject to copyright claims, an argument the company intends to pursue in its parallel litigation in the United States.
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