The companies behind popular AI image generators Stable Diffusion and Midjourney were denied a quick escape of a copyright lawsuit from visual artists, according to a tentative ruling released Tuesday by a San Francisco federal judge.
The 10 artists, which include illustrator Gregory Manchess and web comic designer Sarah Andersen, have plausibly alleged that their copyrighted art was taken without permission by Stability AI Ltd. and Midjourney Inc. to create powerful AI diffusion image models, Judge William Orrick said.
The artists have evidence to suggest their images are contained within the AI models as “compressed copies,” represented as mathematical information, …