Getty Images is challenging a High Court ruling in its copyright dispute with Stability AI, asking appeal judges to reconsider whether artificial intelligence models trained overseas can constitute infringing copies when distributed in Britain.
The case concerns the interpretation of existing copyright legislation and could affect the legal exposure of AI developers whose systems are trained outside the UK but subsequently made available to British customers.
Getty Images brought proceedings against London-based Stability AI, alleging that its Stable Diffusion image-generation system had been developed using millions of copyrighted photographs without permission.
In November 2025, the High Court largely rejected Getty’s remaining claims, although the company achieved limited success over trade mark infringement associated with outputs from earlier versions of Stable Diffusion.
The copyright dispute narrowed during the original proceedings after Getty withdrew its primary infringement claims because it could not establish that the relevant AI training had taken place in Britain.
Those claims would have required the court to examine alleged acts of copying during model development within the jurisdiction.
Instead, the remaining dispute concerned secondary copyright infringement, which can apply to activities involving the importation, possession, sale, or distribution of articles containing infringing copies.
Under sections 22 and 23 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, certain dealings with infringing copies can create liability independently of the original act of copying.
The High Court accepted that the concept of an article was not restricted to physical objects and could encompass digital material.
However, Mrs Justice Joanna Smith concluded that the Stable Diffusion model did not constitute an infringing copy of Getty’s photographs.
That decision reflected an agreed factual position in the proceedings that the model itself did not store or reproduce the original images used during training.
Appeal examines the meaning of copying —
Getty argues that the court adopted an overly restrictive interpretation of the secondary infringement provisions.
Its position is that an AI model developed using copyrighted material should potentially qualify as an infringing copy where the training process would have involved unlawful reproduction had it occurred in Britain.
Stability AI disputes that interpretation and maintains that the completed model cannot itself be treated as an infringing copy when it does not contain the protected works.
The Court of Appeal is examining whether the High Court correctly interpreted the statutory requirements, rather than conducting a fresh trial of every allegation made in the original proceedings.
The distinction limits the scope of any eventual judgment. In particular, the appeal is not expected to establish whether copying copyrighted works during AI training within the UK would amount to primary infringement.
Nor is it intended to determine whether all outputs generated by an AI system infringe the rights of content owners.
Those questions remain relevant to technology developers, creative businesses, publishers, and commercial users of generative AI, but they are separate from the narrower legal issue before the appeal judges.
The case also highlights the importance of where AI models are developed, the legal characterisation of the resulting software, and the rules governing commercial distribution between jurisdictions.
Businesses developing generative AI products increasingly operate across international markets, making differences between national intellectual property rules an important consideration in licensing and compliance.
The Getty proceedings are taking place alongside wider debate over copyright licensing and the use of protected material in developing AI systems, with courts in different jurisdictions considering related questions.
The appeal hearing began on 11 November. Its eventual judgment will determine whether the High Court correctly applied the secondary infringement provisions to the circumstances of the Stability AI dispute.
