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.
Two Amazon Prime Air MK30 drones collided with a crane on Oct. 2, 2025 in Tolleson, Arizona.
Courtesy: 12News
Amazon is facing federal probes after two of its Prime Air delivery drones collided with a crane in Arizona, prompting the company to temporarily pause drone service in the area.
The incident occurred on Wednesday around 1 p.m. EST in Tolleson, Arizona, a city west of Phoenix. Two MK30 drones crashed into the boom of a stationary construction crane that was in a commercial area just a few miles away from an Amazon warehouse.
One person was evaluated on the scene for possible smoke inhalation, said Sergeant Erik Mendez of the Tolleson Police Department.
“We’re aware of an incident involving two Prime Air drones in Tolleson, Arizona,” Amazon spokesperson Terrence Clark said in a statement. “We’re currently working with the relevant authorities to investigate.”
Both drones sustained “substantial” damage from the collision on Wednesday, which occurred when the aircraft were mid-route, according to preliminary FAA crash reports.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident. The NTSB didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The drones were believed to be flying northeast back-to-back when they collided with the crane that was being used for roof work on a distribution facility, Tolleson police said in a release. The drones landed in the backyard of a nearby building, according to the release.
The probes come just a few months after Amazon, in January, paused drone deliveries in Tolleson and College Station, Texas, temporarily following two crashes at its Pendleton, Oregon, test site. Those crashes also prompted investigations by the FAA and NTSB. The company resumed deliveries in March after it said it had resolved issues with the drone’s software, CNBC previously reported.
Amazon says its delivery drones are equipped with a sense-and-avoid system that enables them to “detect and stay away from obstacles in the air and on the ground.” The system also allows the aircraft to operate without visual observers over greater distances, the company said.
For over a decade, Amazon has been working to bring to life founder Jeff Bezos’ vision of drones whizzing toothpaste, books and batteries to customers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less. But progress has been slow, as Prime Air has only been made available in a handful of U.S. cities.
Amazon has set a goal to deliver 500 million packages by drone per year by the end of the decade.
Aravind Srinivas, chief executive officer Perplexity AI, during a news conference at the SK Telecom Co. headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday, Sept.4, 2024.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Perplexity AI on Thursday announced that its artificial-intelligence-powered web browser Comet is available worldwide, and will be free to users.
The Comet browser is designed to serve as a personal assistant that can search the web, organize tabs, draft emails, shop and more, according to Perplexity. The startup initially launched Comet in July to Perplexity Max subscribers for $200 a month, and the waitlist has ballooned to “millions” of people, the company said.
Tune in at 8:10 a.m. ET Friday as Perplexity co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas joins CNBC TV to discuss the release of its AI browser Comet to users for free. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.
Perplexity’s decision to provide Comet for free could help it attract more users as it works to fend off rivals like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic that have their own AI browser offerings.
In September, Google rolled out Gemini in its Chrome browser, Anthropic announced a browser-based AI agent in August and OpenAI announced Operator, an agent that uses a browser to complete tasks, in January. Perplexity made an unsolicited $34.5 billion bid for Google’s Chrome browser in August.
Perplexity is best known for its AI-powered search engine that gives users simple answers to questions and links out to the original source material on the web. After the company was accused of plagiarizing content from media outlets, it launched a revenue-sharing model with publishers last year.
The company also introduced Comet Plus in August, which is a subscription that gives users access to content from “trusted publishers and journalists,” according to a blog post. Perplexity said Tuesday that CNN, Condé Nast, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Le Monde, and Le Figaro are its inaugural publishing partners.
Perplexity said additional features are also on the way. The company teased a mobile version of Comet and a feature called Background Assistant, which can work on multiple tasks simultaneously and asynchronously.
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