Artificial intelligence developer Stability AI has largely won a major UK High Court battle against global photo agency Getty Images.

The decision is expected to influence how courts interpret copyright laws in the age of generative AI.

The London court rejected Getty’s claims that Stability AI, whose directors include filmmaker James Cameron, had infringed its copyright by using millions of protected images to train its Stable Diffusion image-generation model.

The judge ruled that the AI system “does not store or reproduce any copyright works” and therefore cannot legally be deemed an infringing copy.

The judgment followed Getty’s decision during the trial to drop its primary copyright claim after admitting there was no evidence that Stable Diffusion had been trained in the UK.

However, the court did find “extremely limited” trademark infringement after Getty demonstrated that early versions of Stable Diffusion had produced a handful of AI-generated images containing replicas of its watermark.

The judge said these incidents were historic and narrow in scope.

Both companies have claimed victory.

Stability AI’s general counsel Christian Dowell said the decision “resolves the copyright concerns that were the core issue,” while Getty described the ruling as a “significant win for intellectual property owners,” pointing to the court’s finding that AI models can still fall under existing IP laws.

Legal experts say the result exposes gaps in current copyright protections for creative works used in AI training.

Getty, whose shares fell sharply following the decision, called for stronger transparency rules and said it would rely on the findings in its ongoing US lawsuit against Stability AI.

The case is one of the first to test how copyright law applies to AI systems that learn from vast online datasets.