#Getty Images

#Getty Images

Stability AI, the creator of popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, was largely victorious against Getty Images on Tuesday in a British legal battle over the material used to train AI models. The case originally looked set to produce a landmark ruling on AI and copyright in the UK, but it landed with a thud and failed to set any clear precedent for the big question dividing AI companies and creative firms: whether AI models need permission to train on copyrighted works.

AI image generators can create unique visuals within seconds from a single text prompt. Tech companies train these image generators on millions of images scraped most commonly from across the internet without attribution -- or, too rarely, licensed from individual creators or collections. When an AI image generator spits out an image from a user prompt, it's taking inspiration (or, in some cases, outright copying) from every human-generated image it's been trained on.

Stability AI described Getty Images' lawsuit as an existential threat to the generative AI industry, accusing the company of using fanciful legal routes to combat innovation.