Monday this week marked the start of a trial before the UK High Court that could have important ramifications for both content / brand owners, as well as AI and tech companies.

US-based visual media and stock imagery company Getty sued the UK’s Stability AI, a UK AI company known for its “Stable Diffusion” model for generating imagery, in 2023.

At root, the case comes down to allegations by Getty that Stability AI infringed its copyright (and other IP rights) by allowing Stable Diffusion to train itself using millions of Getty images scraped from Getty websites and output content containing Getty IP; rather obviously, on Getty’s case, without payment.

Beyond what Getty allege to be the taking of its copyright, a range of ancillary issues will come up for decision – just one of which is whether the alleged reproduction of Getty watermarks in certain Stable Diffusion output infringed Getty’s trade mark rights. Plus whether any relevant training or development of Stable Diffusion took place in the UK at all, in order to ground jurisdiction here for certain of the claims…

Set to occupy some 18 days of the UK High Court’s time (which is rather exceptional in such cases); involving a large number of issues for determination; and inevitably traversing a swathe of factual evidence and legal argument; the decision in the case is sure to matter to both content and brand owners, as well as the world of tech and AI. The former to know whether there is anything they can sensibly do to prevent AI “training” itself on their content without consent, or using it in its output; and the latter to know just what the boundaries of acceptable AI training, development and use are.

So watch this space – unless it gets scraped and replaced with something else beforehand – because the judgment, once it arrives, could have major implications for UK copyright and AI policy at a legislative level, as well as how attractive the UK is for AI developers and / or IP owners.