Google class action claims company trained AI tool with copyrighted work

Google AI tool class action lawsuit overview: 

• Who: A group of visual artists filed a class action lawsuit against Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google LLC. 
• Why: The group claims Google and Alphabet trained their artificial intelligence (AI) software with datasets containing copyrighted images. 
• Where: The AI copyrighted work class action lawsuit was filed in California federal court. 

Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google LLC trained their artificial intelligence (AI) software with datasets containing copyrighted images, a new class action lawsuit alleges. 

Plaintiffs Jingna Zhang, Sarah Andersen, Hope Larson and Jessica Fink claim in their class action lawsuit that Google’s AI tool, Imagen, uses copyrighted images as training material despite not being authorized to use those images. 

“Because Imagen contains weights that represent a transformation of the protected expression in the training dataset, Imagen is itself an infringing derivative work,” the Google AI tool class action states. 

The group of visual artists want to represent a nationwide class of individuals who own a United States copyright in any work used by Google as a training image for its Google-LAION Models during the class period. 

Google backtracked by making AI model publicly available, class action claims

Zhang, Andersen, Larson and Fink argue Google also made Imagen — a text-to-image diffusion AI model — publicly available, despite initially professing a commitment not to release the tool for public use “without further safeguards.” 

“Plaintiffs and the Class members never authorized Google to make copies of their works, make derivative works, publicly display copies (or derivative works), or distribute copies (or derivative works),” the Google AI tool class action says. 

The group of visual artists claim Google is guilty of direct copyright infringement and Alphabet is guilty of vicarious copyright infringement. 

The plaintiffs demand a jury trial and request injunctive relief along with an award of statutory and actual damages for themselves and all class members. 

A group of individuals filed a similar class action lawsuit against Alphabet, Google and Google Deepmind in July 2023 over claims they collected information without permission or copyright to train their AI product, Bard. 

Are you concerned that your copyrighted work been used by Google to train AI products? Let us know in the comments.

The plaintiffs are represented by Joseph R. Saveri, Cadio Zirpoli, Christopher K. L. Young and Elissa Buchanan of Joseph Saveri Law Firm, LLP, Matthew Butterick of Butterick Law and Brian D. Clark, Laura M. Matson, Arielle S. Wagner and Eura Chang of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP. 

The Google AI tool class action lawsuit is Zhang, et al. v. Google LLC, et al., Case No. 3:24-cv-02531, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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