Judge Dismisses Copyright Claims Against DeviantArt and Midjourney; Case Against Stability AI Continues

Claims Dismissed Due to Lack of Copyright Registration and Unclear Allegations, Permission Granted to Artists to Refile Amended Complaints Against Midjourney and DeviantArt

• A California federal court judge dismissed multiple claims made by artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz against AI developers Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt. The judge, however, granted the artists permission to file an amended complaint against Midjourney and DeviantArt.
• The issue revolves around the alleged use of the artists' works to train AI's image generator models, with allegations suggesting this constitutes copyright violation. The artists' attorneys confirmed an amended complaint will be filed next month.
• The judge dismissed most of the copyright claims against Midjourney and DeviantArt as Andersen had not proved they had directly infringed upon her copyright. The two companies hadn't scraped images or trained the AI model themselves.
• Judge Orrick dismissed copyright violation claims made by McKernan and Ortiz because neither had registered their work with the US Copyright Office, but allowed Andersen's case to continue against Stability AI, as its image synthesis model allegedly contains elements of her copyrighted work.
• While questioning if machine-generated outputs are merely derivatives of copyrighted images, Judge Orrick stated that without obvious visual similarities to original works, it might be challenging for the artists to prove copyright infringement in future cases.

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