Getty Images sued Stability AI for copyright infringement on Feb. 3, 2023, where the case languished without much activity.
Well, finally, Getty is moving forward with the case. But it’s doing so only by voluntarily dismissing the Delaware lawsuit refiling its complaint in the Northern District of California, which it did on August 14, 2025.
The re-filed complaint is longer than the original complaint and the Second Amended Complaint.
One noticeable addition is that Getty Images is asserted that Stability AI’s alleged use of its photographs has resulted in “dilution of the market for Getty Images’ copyrighted works,” in addition to its claim of trademark dilution.
So Getty Images alleges both copyright dilution and trademark dilution–yes, a bit confusing. (I’ve argued that copyright dilution is unconstitutional by stretching copyright to non-infringing works of others simply because they are in the same genre of work. But that’s an issue for another day.)
Here’s more on Getty’s assertion of suffering harm from copyright dilution: “Yet Stability AI has notpaid a cent to Getty Images or other content owners from which it reproduced copyrighted content without permission to train its highly lucrative models that disseminate such vast quantities of competing content to users and dilute the value of Getty Images’ own offerings.” (Para. 94).
“The gravity of Stability AI’s brazen theft and freeriding is compounded by the fact that, by utilizing Getty Images’ copyrighted content for artificial intelligence and machine learning, Stability AI is stealing a service that Getty Images already provides to paying customers in the marketplace for that very purpose. By diluting the market for Getty Images’ works, such copying rather diminishes the human incentive to create, thwarting the purpose of the Copyright Act. Upon information and belief, Stability AI’s wrongful exploitation of Getty Images’ visual assets has significantly diminished their market value.”
Among other remedies, Getty Images asks for an injunction to stop Stability AI from distributing its diffusion model: “As a direct and proximate result of Stability AI’s wrongful conduct, Getty Images has been substantially and irreparably harmed in an amount not readily capable of determination and, unless permanently enjoined from further acts of infringement and continuing to use and distribute Stable Diffusion models trained using Getty Images’ copyrighted content without permission, Stability AI will cause additional irreparable harm for which there is no adequate remedy at law. Getty Images is thus entitled to permanent injunctive relief preventing Stability AI, its agents, affiliates, employees and all persons acting in concert with it from engaging in any further infringement of Getty Images’ content.”
The case has been initially assigned to Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros. The docket is here.
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