A stock agency counts twelve million photographs
On 3 February 2023 Getty Images sued Stability AI in the District of Delaware, case 1:23-cv-00135. The first paragraph of the complaint gives the number: more than 12 million photographs from the Getty collection copied along with their captions and metadata. The suit separately alleges that Stable Diffusion reproduces a distorted Getty watermark, and adds trademark claims.
Why it matters
Until then the plaintiffs had been authors estimating how much had been taken. Here a party with its own inventory stood against a model's maker for the first time: not billions of images off the web, but a counted quantity of one rightsholder's licensed work. A watermark in the model's output became evidence of copying that needs no expert to see.
The original complaint names only Stability AI, Inc. as defendant; the amended complaint of 29 March 2023, filed as document 13, adds Stability AI, Ltd. of the United Kingdom. A table in the complaint lists eight registered Getty Images trademarks from 2002 to 2017. Section E describes attempts to circumvent the Getty watermarks. What the record does not claim. Getty also began separate proceedings in the High Court in London; no primary document of those proceedings was read here, so the record does not describe them. Nothing is said about how the Delaware case ended.