A group of artists have issued proceedings against Google in a court in the Northern District of California in the United States. The artists are claiming Google has infringed their respective copyrights.
It is alleged that various artists, including Jingna Zhang, Sarah Andersen, Jessica Fink and Hope Larson claim that Google are using their copyrighted works as part of the foundational training data for Google’s Imagen image generator. The information came to the attention of the artists following Google’s 2022 publication of a paper which detailed its use of the LAION-400M dataset which is publicly available.
Google has been accused of creating countless copies of documents which are very similar to the work of the artists. Documents filed with the court state that “the intermediate copies of every copyrighted work that Google made during the training to is Google LAION Models were substantially similar to the copyrighted work itself.”
The case and other similar matters demonstrate the issues those working in AI sectors face and will likely shape and settle the uncertainty in the laws surrounding AI and copyright in the future.
If you have any questions on the above, feel free to contact a member of the team at 0191 281 4000 or alternatively at legal@mcdanielslaw.com.
