A group of artists represented by the Joseph Saveri Law Firm has filed a US federal class-action lawsuit in San Francisco against AI-art companies Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt for alleged violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, violations of the right of publicity, and unlawful competition.

It really was only a matter of time before the explosion AI art generators made its way to the courts. I’m not sure anyone can say for certain how it will shake out. Even Getty Images has files a suit Getty vs Stable Diffusion

Remember web scraping is more or less legal from a 2020 ruling

On September 9, the U.S. 9th circuit court of Appeals ruled (Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California) that web scraping public sites does not violate the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act). This is a really important decision. The court not only legalized this practice, but also prohibited competitors from removing information from your site automatically if the site is public. The court confirmed the clear logic that the entry of the web scraper bot is not legally different from the entry of the browser. In both cases, the “user” requests open data — and does something with it on their side.