Seattle-based Getty, which produces editorial content and creative stock images and video, accused Stability AI of using its images to "train" its Stable Diffusion system, which can generate images from text inputs.
The company had sued Stability AI for breach of copyright on the grounds Stable Diffusion was trained using Getty's images, and that images generated by Stable Diffusion reproduced its copyrighted images.
But Getty dropped that part of its case mid-trial, partly due to a lack of evidence about where Stable Diffusion was "trained," which intellectual property lawyers said could limit the wider significance of Tuesday's ruling for the law on AI.
Getty's claims of trademark infringement and for secondary copyright infringement, alleging that Stability AI imported into the UK an AI model that breached its copyright remained live before the London High Court's decision.
Judge Joanna Smith said in a written ruling that Getty had succeeded "in part" on trademark infringement but her findings were "both historic and extremely limited in scope".
She also dismissed Getty's secondary copyright infringement claim.
Getty Images said in a statement that the ruling "confirms that Stable Diffusion's inclusion of Getty Images' trademarks in AI-generated outputs infringed those trademarks".
The statement added that the ruling "established a powerful precedent that intangible articles, such as AI models, are subject to copyright infringement claims in the same way as tangible articles," which Getty said it would use in its parallel lawsuit against Stability AI in the United States.
Gill Dennis, a lawyer at Pinsent Masons, said the ruling meant the government should now provide "clear, timely policy guidance" on the question of whether training AI on copyrighted material is an act of infringement.
Getty's decision to abandon large parts of its case means the issue of whether training AI models on copyrighted works constitutes infringement in the UK is unresolved, lawyers said.
Iain Connor, from the law firm Michelmores, said that "leaves the UK without a meaningful verdict on the lawfulness of an AI model's process of learning from copyright materials".
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