Artists Advance ‘Compressed Copies’ Theory in Stability AI Suit

A group of illustrators and visual artists suing Stability AI Ltd., Midjourney Inc. and other AI image generators for copyright infringement advanced a novel theory that their images have been “compressed” inside of AI models.

Judge William H. Orrick on Monday declined to dismiss the copyright claims against each company. He found that that the artists provided sufficient evidence at this early stage of the case that their copyrighted work is stored as mathematical representations within Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion model, which powers the AI products from the other companies.

“That these works may be contained in Stable Diffusion as ...