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Judge Orrick dismisses most of the artists' first complaint against Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt with leave to amend, but keeps Sarah Andersen's direct infringement claim over training

In the first ruling in the first copyright class action against image-generation companies, Judge William H. Orrick on Oct. 30, 2023 granted the motions to dismiss in full except for Sarah Andersen's direct infringement claim against Stability AI. The artists alleged that Stability, through LAION, scraped about five billion images, including theirs, to train Stable Diffusion, and that the model, DreamUp and Midjourney contain 'compressed copies' of the works. The judge held that Andersen's allegation that Stability downloaded and used her registered works for training sufficed, and that the defendants' arguments about how the model works were factual. He dismissed Kelly McKernan's and Karla Ortiz's copyright claims because their works were unregistered, dismissed the direct claims against DeviantArt and Midjourney and the vicarious claims for failure to explain the compressed-copies theory or allege substantially similar output, dismissed the DMCA § 1202 claim for failure to say which defendant removed what copyright management information, and found the UCL claim preempted insofar as it rested on copyright. He warned he would be less generous with leave next time.