Finally, the much awaited United Kingdom (UK) Getty Images v Stability AI judgment was passed recently. There were huge expectations that unresolved legal relationships between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and copyright law will be addressed, and perhaps inform the development of related global jurisprudence.
The expectation was fairly understandable, especially for the African journalists, media proprietors, intellectual property law scholars and experts.
Getty Images is a visual media company with huge global footprints. It supplies many media products such as photography, videos, and music with an enviable library of close to 500 million assets. As a content creator, it employs about three thousand people.
The ramifications of AI and free riding activities have some impact on the livelihoods of such a huge workforce. Moreso, if its copyrights are threatened by AI and other free riders.
This dimension provides chilling lessons for smaller operators on the African continent without the financial muscle to litigate and challenge big techs such as Stability AI, with an estimated $160 million valuation. Importantly, Getty images carry African content, with business operations as well,
The judgment was on Stability AI alleged unlawful use of Getty Images content. Stability AI has faced litigation challenges from Getty Images in both the UK and United States’ Delaware federal court.
In the UK, Getty Images accused Stability AI of copyright and trademark infringement, while the pending lawsuit in Delaware alleged the company misused over 12 million photos from its collection to train its AI image-generation system, Stable Diffusion.
Both lawsuits highlight the implications of AI around the broader concerns of the use of copyrighted material in AI training datasets.
Stability AI is among big AI companies’ that has been having tensions with media proprietors, posing the future of journalism at risk. The judgment is seen as a ‘blow to copyright owners’ – and this include media proprietors.
Stability AI won the landmark case which had examined the lawfulness of AI models using vast troves of copyrighted data without permission.
Getty images huge copyrighted photographs could be exploited without clear AI statutory compensatory frameworks. With this judgment, does this mean the photo agency’s material is now up to use – freely – without proper licensing frameworks?
The challenge that emerges is that the law in many African countries is not clear on the relationship between AI and creative content producers. Every African content creator – must be ‘very afraid’- perhaps, for a number of reasons.
The journalistic material carrying copyrights can be potentially used without permission and compensation. The exclusive owners’ right to exclusive monopoly for a limited duration to allow them to recoup their investment arising from their sweat and brow is obviously under threat.
This calls for African jurisdictions to revisit their copyright law and ensure a stronger copyright law that protects creators.
But the legal issues remain indisputably complex. Obviously, there is need to strike a balance between the interests of the creative industry and AI developers, in which the former will continue to be innovative and create content without suffering remuneration ‘harm’ – while the latter will continue with its productive and useful technological advancements.
At present – the behaviour of AI of scrapping and copying millions of its copyrighted material does not spur innovation.
African jurisdictions must therefore legislate on the issue of copyright and AI, striking the right economically sound balance that does not create market disequilibrium. It’s understandable that prominent artists, in particular UK musicians are already lobbying for this.
South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda and Nigeria are major continental hubs for digital and tech events.In particular the upcoming MWC Kigali 2026 could perhaps consider bringing AI developers and musicians, journalists, filmmakers, authors under one roof to discuss the implication of AI’s unlicensed free riding activities on the copyright holders’ remuneration.
There is obvious need to shape the future of Africa’s digital transformation with all stakeholders making an input, especially on this contentious issue.
We can’t fault AI developers in building a powerful and effective generative AI system. At the same time, they must spur innovation by creating win-win frameworks with creative content producers.
Already, there is uncertainty over how AI should interact with copyright holders, with AI developers claiming that restrictive law on exploiting content is holding back its growth, but the creative industry is crying foul.
While Getty Images might have lost its secondary infringement copyright claim, it won its trademark violation claim. Drawing lessons from the Getty images case, AI trademark infringements should be coherently clarified and addressed with clear guidelines.
This arises from AI’s capacity to generate substantially similar marks capable of creating confusion or diluting existing marks. The lack of clarity over data and trademark rights may affect the development and protection strategies for new AI technology, given the global significant increase in the number of AI-related patent applications. Therefore the role of AI developers, users and owners must be clarified with liability patterns coherently assigned.
It’s a good sign, but not enough. Getty Images claimed that its photo database was its business ‘lifeblood’ – yet jurisdictional issues emerged raising questions around content creators can contend with jurisdictional and choice of law issues. With the Internet and emerging technology defying geographical boundaries – there isn’t any significant recourse options for African content creators whose works are exploited beyond the continent.
If big companies like Getty images have insurmountable challenges litigating against big tech AI companies investing billions in technological advancements, how about less resourced African creative content creators? The existing challenge is the proliferation of AI patents, and AI-IP infringements. Millions of works are copied without explicit copyright compensatory frameworks.
Important lessons can be drawn from the Getty Images precedent around striking a balance around the interests of both AI developers and creative industries, alive to ethical use considerations without compromising the IP rights.
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