Andersen v. Stability AI
Andersen v. Stability AI — Visual Artist Class Action over Stable Diffusion (N.D. Cal.)
N.D. Cal. · Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd., No. 3:23-cv-00201 (N.D. Cal.)
- Status
- Blocked / in litigation
- Took effect
- January 13, 2023
- Applies to
- Stability AI Ltd., Midjourney Inc., DeviantArt Inc., Runway AI Inc.
Visual artists Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz brought the first major image-generator class action, alleging Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt, and Runway trained text-to-image models on artists' copyrighted works scraped from the web. After two rounds of motions to dismiss, key claims survived and the case is in discovery.
Who is protected: Visual artists whose works were scraped via the LAION dataset for image-generator training
Legal detail
Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd., No. 3:23-cv-00201 (N.D. Cal., filed Jan. 13, 2023; Judge William H. Orrick). Original complaint largely dismissed Oct. 30, 2023; First Amended Complaint substantially survived an Aug. 12, 2024 ruling: direct copyright infringement claims against Stability AI, Runway, Midjourney and DeviantArt survived; induced infringement and DMCA § 1202(b) claims survived against Stability; Lanham Act and unjust enrichment dismissed. Discovery ongoing 2025–2026.
Key facts
| Jurisdiction | N.D. Cal. |
|---|---|
| Level | Federal |
| Citation | Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd., No. 3:23-cv-00201 (N.D. Cal.) |
| Topics | copyright and training data |
| Court record | Andersen v. Stability AI — CourtListener 3:23-cv-00201 |
More AI rules in N.D. Cal.
- Tremblay v. OpenAI · Blocked / in litigation
- Silverman v. OpenAI · Blocked / in litigation
- Kadrey v. Meta · Blocked / in litigation
- Chabon v. OpenAI · Blocked / in litigation
- Chabon v. Meta · Blocked / in litigation
- Doe v. GitHub (Copilot) · Blocked / in litigation
Related copyright and training data rules elsewhere
- Hachette v. Google (Gemini AI copyright) · Blocked / in litigation
- New York Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act (2026) · Proposed / pending
- Copyright Office AI Guidance · In effect
- USPTO AI Inventorship Guidance · Repealed / replaced
- NYT v. OpenAI / Microsoft · Blocked / in litigation
- Authors Guild v. OpenAI · Blocked / in litigation
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