The main Stability AI lawsuit activity right now centers on three cases: the artist-led class action Andersen v. Stability AI in federal court in San Francisco, Getty Images’ UK High Court case, and Getty’s refiled U.S. case in the Northern District of California. The UK court handed down a mostly pro-Stability ruling in November 2025 that is now on appeal. The U.S. cases are moving toward summary judgment in February 2027 (Andersen) and a jury trial in early 2028 (Getty).
Andersen v. Stability AI: The Artist Class Action
Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz sued Stability AI in January 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging the company scraped billions of images from the internet to train Stable Diffusion without permission.1CourtListener. Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd. The case, No. 3:23-cv-00201, also names Midjourney and DeviantArt as defendants for building on Stable Diffusion.2NYU JIPEL. Andersen v. Stability AI: The Landmark Case Unpacking the Copyright Risks of AI Image Generators
The plaintiffs bring claims for direct copyright infringement, induced copyright infringement, false endorsement under the Lanham Act, and trade dress infringement.3BakerHostetler. Andersen v. Stability AI Their copyright theory has two parts. The “model theory” argues that Stable Diffusion itself is an infringing copy because its parameters embody transformations of their work. The “distribution theory” argues that handing the model to other companies and users is equivalent to distributing the copyrighted images baked into it.2NYU JIPEL. Andersen v. Stability AI: The Landmark Case Unpacking the Copyright Risks of AI Image Generators
What Survived the Motion to Dismiss
On August 12, 2024, Judge William Orrick denied motions to dismiss the copyright infringement claims against Stability AI and Midjourney, calling both the model and distribution theories “plausible” at this stage. He let the induced-infringement claim against Stability proceed, pointing to allegations that the company’s then-CEO described Stable Diffusion’s ability to “recreate” images and that the product was “built to a significant extent on copyrighted works.” The false endorsement and trade dress claims against Midjourney also survived.4Justia. Andersen et al v. Stability AI Ltd. et al
Several claims were cut. Judge Orrick dismissed the DMCA Section 1202 claims with prejudice, holding the statute requires an “identical copy” and that no one alleged Stable Diffusion outputs were identical to any plaintiff’s work. He also dismissed the unjust enrichment claim as preempted by the Copyright Act, and threw out the breach of contract claim against DeviantArt with prejudice.4Justia. Andersen et al v. Stability AI Ltd. et al
Where the Case Stands Now
Fact discovery had been set to close on March 13, 2026.3BakerHostetler. Andersen v. Stability AI In February 2026, Judge Orrick granted the plaintiffs’ request to push the schedule back roughly three months, moving the summary judgment hearing from November 2026 to February 17, 2027.5ChatGPT Is Eating the World. Sarah Andersen’s Copyright Lawsuit Gets Pushed Back Again at Her Request Whether the model and distribution theories survive will turn on whether plaintiffs can show their protected works are, in some recoverable form, contained within Stable Diffusion. The judge explicitly reserved that question for summary judgment.2NYU JIPEL. Andersen v. Stability AI: The Landmark Case Unpacking the Copyright Risks of AI Image Generators
Getty Images v. Stability AI in the UK
Getty Images sued Stability AI in the UK High Court, alleging that training reproduced more than 12 million Getty photographs along with their captions and metadata. The case went to trial, and the outcome was narrower than Getty had hoped.
The November 2025 Ruling
On November 4, 2025, Mrs. Justice Joanna Smith ruled largely in favor of Stability AI on the copyright questions.6Pinsent Masons. Getty’s Copyright Case Against Stability AI Fails Getty had already abandoned its primary copyright infringement claim before closing submissions after acknowledging it could not prove training took place in the UK. It also dropped its “outputs” claim after Stability AI blocked the prompts used to generate the offending examples, which the court said made the relief “substantially achieved.” The database rights claim was abandoned too.7UK Judiciary. Getty Images v Stability AI
That left secondary copyright infringement: Getty’s argument that the Stable Diffusion model itself was an “infringing copy” under UK law, and that importing and distributing it violated Sections 22 and 23 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. The judge rejected it. She accepted that an intangible AI model can count as an “article” under the statute, but held that it only qualifies as an “infringing copy” if it has “at some point contained a copy — permanent or transient — of the copyright works used to train it.” Because Stable Diffusion stores statistically trained parameters rather than reconstructions of images, the secondary infringement claim failed.6Pinsent Masons. Getty’s Copyright Case Against Stability AI Fails
Getty won narrowly on trademarks. The court found that older versions of Stable Diffusion (v1 and v2) were capable of generating synthetic images carrying Getty and iStock watermarks, which constituted limited trademark infringement under Sections 10(1) and 10(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1994. The judge described those instances as “extremely limited in scope” and said it was “impossible to know” how often real users encountered watermarked outputs. Dilution claims under Section 10(3) were dismissed for lack of evidence. Claims about newer models (v1.6 and SDXL) were also dismissed because Stability AI had added filters and technical guardrails by then.8Cleary Gottlieb. UK High Court Issues Landmark Ruling in Getty Images v. Stability AI
One finding stood out: the court said responsibility for trademark-infringing outputs lies with the model provider, not the end user, because the provider controls the training data. The court also confirmed that intangible articles like AI models are subject to copyright infringement claims the same way tangible ones are.9Getty Images Newsroom. Getty Images Issues Statement on Ruling in Stability AI UK Litigation
The Appeal
In December 2025, Mrs. Justice Smith granted Getty permission to appeal the dismissal of its secondary copyright infringement claim. She refused Stability AI permission to appeal the trademark findings, meaning Stability has to apply directly to the Court of Appeal if it wants those overturned.10IPKat. Permission to Appeal Granted in Getty v. Stability AI Getty’s filing deadline was February 3, 2026.11CMS Law. Getty Images v Stability AI: Permission to Appeal Sought by Getty Images at Consequentials Hearing Based on typical Court of Appeal timing, a hearing is expected in late 2026, with a decision likely in early 2027.12Taylor Wessing. Next Steps for Getty v Stability: Why Has Permission to Appeal Been Granted
Getty Images v. Stability AI in the US
Getty’s U.S. action has a longer path. The company originally filed in the District of Delaware in February 2023, covering roughly 12 million photographs, their captions and metadata, and trademark infringement over watermarks appearing in AI-generated outputs.13UC Berkeley Law. Getty Images v. Stability AI Complaint That case (1:23-cv-00135) was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.14BakerHostetler. Getty Images v. Stability AI Getty refiled in the Northern District of California as Case No. 3:25-cv-06891, assigned to Judge Trina L. Thompson.15CourtListener. Getty Images (US), Inc. v. Stability AI, Ltd.
The refiled complaint asserts seven causes of action: copyright infringement, false copyright management information under the DMCA, federal trademark infringement, unfair competition, federal trademark dilution, and California state law claims for unfair competition and trademark dilution.16ChatGPT Is Eating the World. Judge Thompson Order re MTD in Getty Images v. Stability AI
On April 23, 2026, Judge Thompson ruled on Stability AI’s motion to dismiss. Most of the case moved forward: the trademark infringement, unfair competition, trademark dilution, and California state law claims all survived. The only casualty was the DMCA false-CMI claim. The court found Getty had adequately alleged that Stability AI knowingly attached false copyright information but had not pleaded the specific intent to “induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal” infringement. That claim was dismissed without prejudice, with leave to amend.16ChatGPT Is Eating the World. Judge Thompson Order re MTD in Getty Images v. Stability AI
The case has been referred to private mediation, to be completed by October 2026, and a jury trial is scheduled for January 18 through February 9, 2028.15CourtListener. Getty Images (US), Inc. v. Stability AI, Ltd.
A Music Case That Did Not Last
In December 2025, musician Jerry Anders (known professionally as Anders Manga) filed a copyright infringement suit against Stability AI and Navarr Enterprises in the Western District of North Carolina (1:25-cv-00451), involving four registered sound recordings. It did not get far. On March 23, 2026, Chief Judge Martin Reidinger dismissed the amended complaint with prejudice, and Anders’ motion to alter or amend the judgment was denied in May 2026.17CourtListener. Anders v. Stability AI US Services Corporation
Related AI Rulings That Could Shape the Outcome
The Stability AI cases do not sit in isolation. Two mid-2025 decisions in other AI copyright cases are already influencing how judges think about training data.
In Bartz v. Anthropic, Judge William Alsup ruled in June 2025 that using legally obtained books to train an AI model was “exceedingly transformative” and qualified as fair use. He drew a sharp line at pirated material, finding that Anthropic’s use of millions of books from Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror was not fair use.18NPR. Anthropic Settlement Authors Copyright AI Anthropic settled rather than go to trial on the piracy claims, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion covering roughly 500,000 pirated works at about $3,000 each. The settlement, which received preliminary court approval in September 2025, requires Anthropic to destroy all files sourced from the pirated databases and gives it no license for future training.19Susman Godfrey. Susman Godfrey Secures $1.5 Billion Settlement in Landmark AI Piracy Case
Two days after Bartz, Judge Chhabria in Kadrey v. Meta also called AI training “highly transformative” and granted Meta summary judgment. He introduced a novel “market dilution” theory, though: even if a model does not regurgitate copyrighted text, it could still harm authors by flooding the market with AI-generated works that compete with the originals. He ruled for Meta only because the plaintiffs had not produced evidence of actual market harm, and he warned that future plaintiffs with a “better-developed record” could win on that theory.20Authors Alliance. Meta Wins on Fair Use for Now but Court Leaves Door Open for Market Dilution
A pending Ninth Circuit appeal matters too. In Doe v. GitHub, software developers are challenging Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI over the alleged stripping of copyright management information from open-source code used to build AI coding tools. Oral arguments were heard on February 11, 2026, and the panel has not yet ruled.21Courthouse News. AI Companies Urge Ninth Circuit to Make Copyright Decisions Clear Because Andersen is also in the Ninth Circuit, any precedent the appeals court sets on DMCA claims and AI training will land directly on Stability AI.
Stability AI’s Shift Toward Licensed Data
While the older-model litigation runs its course, Stability AI has been visibly moving toward licensed training data under new leadership. Prem Akkaraju, previously CEO of Weta Digital, became CEO in June 2024 after co-founder Emad Mostaque resigned.22Stability AI. Stability AI Secures Significant New Investment23Universal Music Group. Universal Music Group and Stability AI Announce Strategic Alliance24Warner Music Group. Warner Music Group and Stability AI Join Forces In May 2026, it released Stable Audio 3.0, which it says is built entirely on licensed data.25TechCrunch. Stability AI Release a New Audio Model That Can Create Six-Minute Songs Enterprise licensing is now required for organizations earning over $1 million annually.26PM Insights. Stability AI
The pivot does not resolve the pending cases, which turn on earlier versions of Stable Diffusion. Adverse outcomes in the U.S. cases could still result in mandatory licensing agreements or financial penalties.27Sacra. Stability AI