A federal judge "trimmed a lawsuit" filed by artists who accused Stability AI, Midjourney and others of copyright infringment in training their AIs on their works without permission.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick dismissed some claims from the proposed class action brought by Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz, including all of the allegations against Midjourney and DeviantArt. The judge said the artists could file an amended complaint against the two companies, whose systems utilize Stability's Stable Diffusion text-to-image technology.
Orrick also dismissed McKernan and Ortiz's copyright infringement claims entirely. The judge allowed Andersen to continue pursuing her key claim that Stability's alleged use of her work to train Stable Diffusion infringed her copyrights.
Sounds like they're all in the clear, for now, except Stability/Stable Diffusion. I want the artists to get paid, and I think the AI companies did what they were accused of, but this lawsuit it gave me the chills because it seems to imply that learning is copyright infringement and that sounds like a bad idea to have lying around.
