Three artists, Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz are filing a lawsuit against the AI image generators Midjourney, Stability AI, and DeviantArt. They claim the AI tools commit copyright violation and infringement of intellectual property.

The lawsuit appears amid growing concerns among content creators over the increasing popularity and use of new AI image and text generators like DALL-E and ChatGPT.

According to a report from Techspot,

 The trio have launched a class action on behalf of all artists affected and are “seeking compensation for damages caused by Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney, and an injunction to prevent future harms.”

The lawsuit alleges direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement related to forgeries, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), violation of class members’ rights of publicity, breach of contract related to the DeviantArt Terms of Service, and various violations of California’s unfair competition laws.”

Their lawyer, Matthew Butterick, says that the case is intended to represent all people whose work has gone uncredited in the wake of new AI systems. These especially include writers, artists, programmers, and other creators, who “are concerned about AI systems being trained on copyrighted work with no consent, credit, or compensation.”

AI creators counterclaim that their technologies fall under the fair use policy, but that will be decided by the courts.