Sidley Discusses the UK’s First Copyright vs. AI Decision

The UK’s first “Copyright vs. AI” decision (Getty Images (US) Inc & ors vs. Stability AI Limited [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch)) marks a clear win for the artificial intelligence industry. The English High Court raised the rhetorical question on the industry’s lips, “whether this judgment will, in reality, have anything to say on the balance to be struck between the two warring factions…”. The Judge’s answer is clear: the case does not answer whether training and development of AI models in the UK is an indefensible infringement of copyright. As to deployment of that trained model, the High Court concluded that an AI model itself cannot constitute an infringing copy. On Stability AI’s reproduction of the Getty trademarks, the High Court found that there was a historic and limited infringement.

The Claimants (collectively Getty), whose business centers on licensing photographic images, videos, and illustrations, alleged that Stability AI (Stability) had scraped millions of its images without consent to train various versions of its open-source AI image generator, Stable Diffusion. Getty claimed that this conduct infringed its copyright and database rights, constituted secondary copyright infringement through the importation of the pretrained software into the UK, and amounted to trademark infringement and passing off through the use of Getty’s marks in AI-generated outputs.

In late 2023, Stability sought reverse summary judgment/strikeout of Getty’s claims. The High Court dismissed the application, holding that there were reasonable grounds to believe further disclosure might clarify where training occurred and that novel questions of statutory interpretation raised by the secondary infringement claim should proceed to trial. However, during trial, Getty had to abandon its primary copyright infringement claim, accepting that there was no evidence that Stability had trained and developed Stable Diffusion in the UK.