Stability AI has partially succeeded in defending itself against accusations of copyright infringement. As reported by The Guardian, Stability AI prevailed in a high-profile UK High Court case, following Getty first suing the company in 2023 for allegedly using its copyright images to train its Stable Diffusion AI art tool without permission.Getty's original claim was that Stability AI had unlawfully copied and processed millions of protected images for training purposes, therefore abusing the rights of the original creators. However, the Seattle-based company eventually withdrew its claims of primary copyright infringement as it reportedly could offer no evidence that unauthorized copying for the training of Stable Diffusion had taken place in the UK.Today's ruling concerns claims of secondary infringement, to which the High Court judge, Justice Joanna Smith, ruled that "an AI model such as Stable Diffusion which does not store or reproduce any copyright works (and has never done so) is not an 'infringing copy'" under UK law. This was despite the ruling finding some evidence of Getty's images being used by Stability, as evidenced by the presence of the former's watermark. While the judge sided with Getty on some of its claims, she said that the evidence was "both historic and extremely limited in scope."The High Court ruling likely won't fill companies and creators concerned about AI-related copyright infringement with a huge amount of optimism, but unsurprisingly, both Getty and Stability AI have been quick to celebrate their respective victories. Getty's statement reads, in part: