AI copyright news, graded by source

Stability AI, Runway and DeviantArt move to dismiss EVOX's car-photo suit, arguing training was fair use, the claims are too late and the outputs copy only a photographic 'look'

In three motions filed Oct. 12, 2026, the Stability AI entities, Runway AI and DeviantArt ask the court to dismiss EVOX Productions' claims over about 104,000 licensed car photographs that EVOX says were in the LAION datasets used to train Stable Diffusion. Stability argues that training a general-purpose image model on the photos was fair use as a matter of law; that the training claim is time-barred because Stable Diffusion and the LAION datasets were public by October 2022, over three years before the July 2026 complaint; that the output claim seeks to protect a photographic "look" (white backgrounds, camera height, lighting) rather than expression; that users, not Stability, generate the outputs; that the contributory claim fails under the Supreme Court's Cox v. Sony intent standard; and that under the Ninth Circuit's Doe v. GitHub a new image lacking EVOX's watermark is not a removal of copyright management information. Runway and DeviantArt make similar arguments and add that they did not train the model; DeviantArt says its DreamUp service only used the pre-trained model. Hearing noticed for Jan. 11, 2027. These are the defendants' arguments; the court has not ruled.