Two main arguments are at play in the lawsuit against Midjourney and Stability AI: namely, that the firms infringed the copyright of the artists by using their images without permission, and that the inclusion of these images in the training data makes the outputs effectively derivative content. On the face of it, says Dr Bahne Sievers, the argument about training data is perfectly reasonable. Most jurisdictions do not allow anyone to use copyrighted data “unless you have a licence,” explains the intellectual property lawyer at FieldFisher. “But, nobody has a licence!”
