Google sued for copyright infringement by artists in US
A group of artists, including photographer Jingna Zhang, and illustrators Sarah Andersen, Jessica Fink, and Hope Larson, have initiated legal proceedings against Google. The company is accused of copyright infringement for allegedly using datasets containing their protected works. The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California in the US. Here's what we know about the suit.
Artists' works found in Google's image generator training data
The artists discovered their copyrighted works, were part of the foundational training data for Google's Imagen image generator. This information came to light, following Google's 2022 publication of a paper detailing its use of the publicly accessible LAION-400M dataset. The "Large-Scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network" (LAION) is a repository of approximately 400 million images and captions used to train image generators, including the copyrighted work of these artists.
Previous legal actions and Google's alleged concealment
This lawsuit follows closely after Imagen's beta release to a select user group. Andersen and two other artists had previously sued image generators Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, for unauthorized use of the LAION-400M dataset. During the processing of these lawsuits, Google updated Imagen without explicitly acknowledging its use of LAION datasets. The plaintiffs claim that Google deliberately concealed its precise training data source to avoid potential legal issues.
Artists demand recognition of copyright infringement
The artists, including Andersen, are pushing for recognition that using their copyrighted works in image training constitutes infringement. They argue that existing legislation has not kept pace with technological advancements. The plaintiffs suggest Google's recruitment of Romain Beaumont, a French AI researcher instrumental in creating the LAION datasets, may be linked to this issue. They insist that rapid technological progress should not overshadow legal protections for copyright owners.
