Getty Images v Stability AI: partial victory for AI developers/deployers

The eagerly anticipated judgment in Getty Images v Stability AI has just been handed down by the English High Court.  

Broadly, the decision is a win for AI developers/deployers based outside the UK who make their AI tools available to UK users. However, this has to be understood in the particular context of this case and in relation to the narrower issues that the court was left to decide at the end of the trial, which concluded in June 2025.

Some commentators have suggested that the ruling is a "damp squib" because of the points it ultimately did not determine. However, our view is that it has important things to say about the competing interests of content rightsholders and AI developers/deployers, with the latter likely to be more encouraged by the outcome.

Background

Getty's original claims alleged that Stability copied millions of its photographs and other content - with associated captions and metadata - without permission to train its AI image generating tool, Stable Diffusion (Input Claim). However, the Input Claim was dropped at the close of the trial because Getty could not produce sufficient evidence to counter Stability AI's assertion that none of the copying took place in the UK, and was therefore outside the scope of primary infringement of the UK's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA).

Getty also claimed that the images generated by UK users of Stable Diffusion were sufficiently similar to images belonging to Getty to constitute copyright infringement, which Stability had authorised (Output Claim). However, at the close of the trial, this claim was also abandoned by Getty as they said that Stability had blocked Stable Diffusion from generating any output infringing Getty's rights and therefore the Output Claim had become academic.

This left two main claims for the court to determine:

• Secondary infringement of copyright claims on the basis that by making Stable Diffusion available to users in the UK, Stability is importing an infringing article into the UK (Importation Claim) or is distributing or possessing an infringing article in the course of business (Distribution Claim); and
• The outputs produced by users of Stable Diffusion sometimes contained Getty’s watermarks, constituting infringement of Getty’s trade mark rights and passing off (Brand Claims).

The Importation and Distribution Claims were particularly important. If the High Court were to find in favour of Getty that making Stable Diffusion available in the UK constitutes importing and/or distributing an infringing “article”, it could lead to an injunction preventing Stability from making Stable Diffusion available to anyone here. This would have been very significant for AI developers/deployers as it would establish that the UK can be ringfenced from using infringing AI models.

Judgment

The judgment was handed down by Justice Joanna Smith on 4 November 2025. While Getty had some success on the Brand Claim, the judge described this as both "historic and limited in scope".

Crucially, the High Court dismissed the Importation Claim and the Distribution Claim. The judge held (for the first time in a UK case) that an "article" may be an intangible object for the purpose of the CDPA - a point that may have wider repercussions for other sectors.

However, based on largely agreed expert evidence, the judge determined that Stable Diffusion did not contain or store (even transiently) any copies of the works on which it had been trained. As such, though Stable Diffusion was an article within the meaning of CDPA, it could not be an infringing article.

The judge also made some important obiter comments. Justice Joanna Smith went on to consider whether, if she was wrong in the conclusion about Stable Diffusion not being an infringing article, had there been importation and/or distribution of that infringing article into the UK by Stability?

In this respect, the judge drew a very important distinction between how Stable Diffusion has been made available. In some cases, this had been through the ability of users to download it in the UK. In those situations, the judge said Stability had imported and distributed Stable Diffusion in the UK. In other situations, Stable Diffusion had been made available by Stability to users through accessing remote servers not located in the UK. In those cases, the judge said this could not constitute importation or distribution in the UK. This distinction about how an AI tool is made available could therefore be very important in future infringement cases. 

The judge also decided that the necessary state of knowledge for secondary infringement - that Stability had knowledge or reason to believe that Stable Diffusion was an infringing copy - would have been satisfied on the facts had Stable Diffusion actually been an infringing copy. 

Observations

This decision offers comfort to AI developers/deployers located outside the UK who are offering AI tools here with similar characteristics to Stable Diffusion (ie those that do not contain or store any copyright protected material on which they have been trained). However, Getty may appeal this aspect of the judgment, so the point could resurface.  

The judgment did not, and could not, address the question of whether training large language models (LLMs) in the UK by scraping websites - the Input Claim - infringes copyright under the CDPA because Getty abandoned that claim at the end of the trial. 

Similarly, the judgment did not address the Output Claim - whether providers of AI tools are responsible when users of those tools create copies of copyright works on which the AI tool has been trained.

Where does this leave content rightsholders, particularly regarding material freely available online? As this case demonstrates, the answer will vary across jurisdictions and – certainly in the UK – case law still does not provide the clarity many were after. 

For AI providers/deployers, this judgment may strengthen arguments for training models in jurisdictions with more permissive copyright regimes. Whether that aligns with UK policy objectives is another matter.

Litigation around AI training and deployment is likely to continue, but this ruling indicates that copyright law may not provide the level of protection content rightsholders hoped for. Commercial strategies, such as licensing deals or paywalls, could become increasingly important. Notably, Getty recently announced a multi-year licensing agreement with Perplexity — a sign that “if you can’t beat them, join them” may be the pragmatic approach.

This publication is a general summary of the law as at the date of publication. It should not replace legal advice tailored to your specific circumstances.

© Farrer & Co LLP, November 2025