Right now, we’re still trying to figure out if using art to train AI models constitutes copyright infringement. Several companies are battling this out in court, and that includes Google. Well, Google has another lawsuit on its plate, as a group of creators is suing Google for using their images to train Imagen.
This is similar to the big lawsuit filed by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft. The publication alleges that both of these companies have been using copyrighted articles to train their AI models. Also, tools that use these models can be coaxed to reproduce entire segments of New York Times’ articles, according to the publication. This lawsuit is still going on, and we’re not quite sure when we’re going to get the results.
A group of creators is suing Google for using their images to train Imagen
Right now, we’re at the very beginning of this lawsuit, so the two sides have yet to battle in the court. The official results may not be available for quite some time.
Cartoonists Sarah Andersen, Hope Larson, and Jessica Fink and photographer Jingna Zhang proposed a class action lawsuit against Google on Friday. They claim that the company misused billions of copyrighted images to train Imagen, and these images include theirs.
Right now, we don’t know how much the individuals asked for in terms of damages, but we know that they want Google to destroy every copy it has of their work. At this point, we have no idea if that will be a possibility.
Google isn’t the only company under fire
The four individuals also filed similar lawsuits against stability AI, MidJourney, and other image generators. However, we don’t have information on those other lawsuits. What we do know is that the lawsuits are not going to stop for image generators.
For the time being, the subject of AI and copyright is still pretty murky. Companies claim that the images are freely available, and that’s true in most cases. However, there are a few points. Firstly, we have no idea if some of the images that image generators are using are actually copyrighted.
Next, it goes beyond simply using copyrighted images. Many of the artists are suing and supporting these lawsuits because artists did not practice and train for years to have their art used without their consent to train AI models. So, artists and other creators are going to continue to fight these companies, and they rightfully should.
2024-04-30 15:06:27