Getty Images Bans AI Art Over Unclear Copyright Ownership
Getty Images prohibits users from uploading AI-generated artwork to its stock library due to unresolved legal and copyright issues surrounding text-to-image tools.
Getty Images bans users from uploading AI-generated artwork to its stock image library due to ongoing concerns over copyright. Advanced text-to-image tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion allow anyone to create high-quality images from text descriptions, which professionals now use for magazine covers and advertisements.
The copyright status of these machine-made pictures remains deeply unclear because the neural networks train on photos and art scraped from various online platforms. This practice raises significant legal questions about ownership, rights, and liability when a computer mimics a specific artist using someone else's software and a third party sells the output.
Amid this uncertainty, Getty updates its policy to completely prohibit AI-generated submissions to protect its customers and avoid a legal mess. CEO Craig Peters states that unaddressed rights issues regarding the imagery, its metadata, and the individuals contained within the pictures force the company to take a proactive stance rather than risk licensing problematic content.