Getty Images spending millions to battle a ‘world of rhetoric’ in AI suit, CEO says
Getty Images’ logo seen displayed on a smartphone with an AI chip and symbol in the background.
Budrul Chukrut | Sopa Images | Lightrocket via Getty Images
LONDON — Getty Images is spending millions of dollars to take on a “world of rhetoric” through its Stability AI suit, the photo licensing company’s boss Craig Peters says.
Peters told CNBC in an interview that both Stability AI — the U.K.-based startup best known for its text-to-image model Stable Diffusion — and other AI labs are stealing copyright-protected material to train their AI models for commercial gain.
These firms, he said, are taking copyrighted material to develop their powerful AI models under the guise of innovation and then “just turning those services right back on existing commercial markets.”
“That’s disruption under the notion of ‘move fast and break things,’ and we believe that’s unfair competition,” Peters added. “We’re not against competition. There’s constant new competition coming in all the time from new technologies or just new companies. But that’s just unfair competition, that’s theft.”
Peters said the AI industry is making the argument that if developers are forced to pay for access to creative works, this will “kill innovation.”
“We’re battling a world of rhetoric,” the CEO told CNBC.
Getty is suing Stability AI in both the U.K. and U.S. over allegations that the company copied 12 million images without permission or compensation “to benefit Stability AI’s commercial interests and to the detriment of the content creators.”
Stability AI has contested the legal action, saying it doesn’t consider Getty’s claims to have merit. The company acknowledges some images from Getty Images websites were used to train its Stable Diffusion model. However, the firm denies it’s liable in respect to any of the claims Getty has made.
Stability AI declined to comment on this story when contacted by CNBC.
The firm has previously argued its use of copyright-protected material online is sound under the “fair use” doctrine, which permits limited use of copyrighted material in certain circumstances — such as “transformative” uses that add new expression or meaning to original works.
‘Our case is very strong’
Technology startups like OpenAI, Anthropic and Mistral have flourished by taking vast amounts of data from the open web and using it to train their foundational AI models, which can produce lifelike texts, images and videos.
However, the strategies of these firms have raised concerns over their use of copyrighted material. Several lawsuits have targeted AI firms over alleged copyright infringements from The New York Times’ suit against OpenAI to several U.S. record labels’ claims against AI music generation services Suno and Udio.
Part of the reason Getty Images is pursuing legal action specifically against Stability AI and not other firms is because such legal pursuits are “extraordinarily expensive,” Peters added. “Even for a company like Getty Images, we can’t pursue all the infringements that happen in one week.”
“We can’t pursue it because the courts are just prohibitively expensive,” he said. “We are spending millions and millions of dollars in one court case.”
AI startups are being funded to the tune of several billions of dollars to develop their foundational models, with tech heavyweights like Microsoft, Google and Amazon ploughing cash into the field.
Nevertheless, Peters acknowledges that it’s not been an easy fight. “I think our case is very strong. But I’m going to caveat that: we had to file in the U.S. and the U.K., and to be candid, we didn’t know where this training took place,” he said.
“There are elements where we have to go through and then we’ve got to spend money for due diligence, and they resist and we’ve got to fight, and we go back and forth,” Peters added.
“The facts in aggregate at a global scale I think are absolutely in our favor. How they manifest themselves around the geographic and legal constructs that are there I think is still stuff that we’re going to have to continue to play out.”
The case is set for an initial trial to determine liability from June 9.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is seen through glass during an event on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, Feb. 11, 2025.
Aurelien Morissard | Via Reuters
Elon Musk tried to derail a major artificial intelligence infrastructure deal in the Middle East after learning that his startup, xAI, would be excluded from the initiative, CNBC has confirmed.
Earlier this month, OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and Emirati firm G42 announced plans to build a sweeping Stargate AI campus in the United Arab Emirates. Musk was frustrated that OpenAI, led by personal rival Sam Altman, was tapped for the deal, and he intervened in an effort to get xAI involved, said a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named in order to speak freely.
Musk argued that President Donald Trump would not approve the deal, the person said. The announcement was delayed by several days as stakeholders, including the White House, dealt with blowback from Musk, who has been engaged in a public and legal spat with Altman and OpenAI.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that Musk attempted to block the deal.
In a statement to CNBC, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt didn’t mention the dustup.
“The United States and the UAE signed a groundbreaking framework agreement establishing the first AI acceleration partnership,” Leavitt said. “The framework advances the buildout of AI infrastructure in the United States and the UAE. This was another great deal for the American people, thanks to President Trump and his exceptional team.”
Musk wasn’t in the UAE when the deal was signed, but was with the president in Saudi Arabia during an earlier part of the Middle East trip, according to a senior White House official. The official said Musk has relayed his concerns about the government fairly treating all AI companies.
OpenAI declined to comment. Musk didn’t respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is a complicating character in Trump’s effort to solidify U.S. leadership in AI. Musk spent close to $300 million to send President Trump back to the White House, and has since been leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), slashing the size of the federal workforce. His time as a special government employee is coming to an end this month.
When it comes to AI, Musk has in recent years been a vocal critic of Altman, a former friend and colleague. The pair helped form OpenAI as a research lab in 2015, but Musk later had a public break with the project and has consistently criticized its structure and close alliance with Microsoft.
While xAI has been building its commercial efforts, acquiring Musk’s social media company X in March and this week partnering with Telegram to roll out its Grok chatbot, Musk has been trying to thwart OpenAI’s effort to convert into a for-profit entity.
Musk has sued OpenAI for breach of contract and to try and stop the conversion, and a Musk-led investor group made an unsuccessful bid to buy control of the startup for $97.4 billion in February.
It’s also not the first time Musk has been critical of Stargate.
In January, Trump unveiled the Stargate project, with OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank committing an initial $100 billion, and up to $500 billion, of investment in AI infrastructure in the U.S. over four years. Musk was quick to cast doubt on the financing behind the project.
“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote in response to an OpenAI post on his social platform X. He later added that SoftBank had “well under” $10 billion secured.
Two months later, SoftBank led a $40 billion investment in OpenAI at a $300 billion valuation.
— CNBC’s Eamon Javers contributed to this report.
WATCH: Elon Musk tried to block Sam Altman’s big AI deal in the UAE
A Dell Technologies sign is seen in Round Rock, Texas, on June 2, 2023.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Shares of Dell Technologies rose on Thursday in extended trading after the company raised its full-year earnings forecast and issued a stronger-than-expected forecast for the current quarter.
However, Dell’s adjusted earnings per share came up short versus LSEG estimates on in-line revenue.
Here’s how the computer maker did versus LSEG consensus estimates:
- Earnings per share: $1.55 adjusted vs. $1.69 estimated
- Revenue: $23.38 billion vs. $23.14 billion estimated
Dell said it expects $2.25 in adjusted earnings per share for the current quarter, with between $28.5 billion and $29.5 billion in revenue. That was significantly higher than LSEG expectations.
Company officials attributed the strong guidance to $7 billion in artificial intelligence systems that are expected to ship during the quarter, which are higher-margin than other Dell systems.
For the full year, Dell still expects about $103 billion in revenue, in line with LSEG expectations, but it raised its forecast for full-year adjusted earnings to $9.40, which was a 10 cent increase from the company’s prior outlook.
Dell is one of Nvidia’s primary vendors that builds systems around the chipmaker’s AI graphics processing units. Dell said on Thursday that it was seeing “unprecedented demand” for AI systems, especially for second-tier cloud providers, such as Coreweave.
Texas-based Dell said that it has $14.4 billion in confirmed orders for AI systems in its backlog that will ship in the coming quarters. It recorded $12.1 billion in confirmed AI orders during the first quarter, the company said. These numbers will turn into recorded revenue when Dell ships the system to its clients. In February, Dell said it expected $15 billion in AI server sales during its fiscal 2026, up from $10 billion last year.
Overall, Dell’s revenue grew 5% on an annual basis. It said it expects revenue to grow 8% during the fiscal year.
Dell’s server business is reported as part of its Infrastructure Solutions Group, which had $10.3 billion in sales during the quarter, a 12% rise. Of that, $6.3 billion was sales for servers and networking, and $4 billion was for computers that store data.
The company’s laptop and PC business, its Client Solutions Group, recorded $12.5 billion in sales as the global PC market is expected to recover this year after several slumping years.
The computer maker also said it significantly stepped up its shareholder capital return during the quarter, spending $2.4 billion on share repurchases and dividends during the period. It spent $2.58 billion on share repurchases for all of its fiscal 2025, which ended in January.
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