Department of Justice Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google AI Generators Sued Over Copyright Infringement The US Department of Justice (DoJ) and eight states have filed a lawsuit against Alphabet subsidiary Google, alleging that the company abused its dominance of the digital ad space. A group of visual artists has sued AI companies Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt, adding to a recent wave of IP litigation against AI tools. lawsuit. “Anyone that believes that this isn’t fair use does not understand the technology and misunderstands the law.” Getty Images is also suing Stability AI, claiming in a statement that the company downloaded and used millions of its images for AI training without obtaining the proper licensing. ads that businesses place on searches that might be relevant to the user. The lawsuit alleges that Google used its dominance on the buyer, seller and exchange side to force ad buyers and sellers to use their servers at less favourable terms than a competitor might offer. The DoJ is seeking to force Google to sell or spin off its digital ad business to diminish this control. The DoJ is also seeking monetary damages for the government, alleging that $100 million worth of its display ads purchased for various agencies and services since 2019 were based on inflated and anticompetitive prices. downloaded and used by the companies in question to develop the AI “without compensation or consent from the artists” whose images were taken, according to the suit. The group seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages. “Please note that we take these matters seriously,” a Stability AI spokesperson said in a statement responding to the over digital advertising technologies”. Google made $169 billion in revenue through ad sales in 2022, with the vast majority coming from targeted search Plaintiffs Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz allege in the class-action lawsuit that Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion tool – which Stability AI, DeviantArt and Midjourney all utilise in the automated generation of images – was trained on billions of copyrightprotected images that were ‘scraped’ from the internet. These images were In a statement on the complaint, the DoJ accused Google of having utilised “anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance MONTHLYROUND-UP 7
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