Last September Getty Images banned the inclusion of AI-generated works in its commercial database over copyright concerns. On Tuesday, Getty Images announced that it is suing Stability AI, maker of the popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, in a London court over alleged copyright violations. 

"It is Getty Images’ position that Stability AI unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright and the associated metadata owned or represented by Getty Images absent a license to benefit Stability AI’s commercial interests and to the detriment of the content creators," Getty Images wrote in a press statement released Tuesday. "Getty Images believes artificial intelligence has the potential to stimulate creative endeavors."

"Getty Images provided licenses to leading technology innovators for purposes related to training artificial intelligence systems in a manner that respects personal and intellectual property rights," the company continued. "Stability AI did not seek any such license from Getty Images and instead, we believe, chose to ignore viable licensing options and long‑standing legal protections in pursuit of their stand‑alone commercial interests." 

The details of the lawsuit have not been made public, though Getty Images CEO Craig Peters told The Verge, that charges would include copyright and site TOS violations like web scraping. Furthermore, Peters explained that the company is not seeking monetary damages in this case so as much as it is hoping to establish a favorable precedent for future litigation.

Text-to-image generation tools like Stable Diffusion, Dall-E and Midjourney don't create the artwork that they produce in the same way people do — there is no imagination from which these ideas can spring forth. Like other generative AI, these tools are trained to do what they do using massive databases of annotated images — think, hundreds of thousands of frog pictures labelled "frog" used to teach a computer algorithm what a frog looks like. 

And why go through the trouble of assembling and annotating a database of your own when there's an entire internet's worth of content there for the taking? AI firms like Clearview and Voyager Labs have already tried and been massively, repeatedly fined for scraping image data from the public web and social media sites. An independent study conducted last August concluded that a notable portion of Stable Diffusion's data was likely pulled directly from the Getty Images site, in part as evidenced by the art tool's habit of recreating the Getty watermark.  

A federal judge has denied Elon Musk’s request to move his upcoming trial against a group of Tesla shareholders to Texas, according to Bloomberg (via The Verge). On January 7th, less than two weeks before the trial was scheduled to begin on the 17th, Musk’s legal team asked to move proceedings out of California, claiming “a substantial portion” of the potential jury pool in San Francisco was likely to hold a bias against the billionaire, in part due to the ongoing layoffs at Twitter.

The upcoming civil trial stems from a class action lawsuit related to “false and misleading” statements Musk made in 2018 when he said he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. Musk’s “funding secured” tweet drew the attention of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, eventually leading to a $40 million settlement.

The shareholders involved in the suit allege Musk’s tweet affected Tesla’s stock price. They’re asking the court to order Musk to stop his “public campaign to present a contradictory and false narrative” of the episode. They say he should also be accountable for potential damages. The group won an early victory last spring when District Judge Edward Chen concluded Musk had “recklessly made the statements with knowledge as to their falsity.”

Of the approximately 200 candidates the court is considering for the jury, 82 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion of Musk in a pre-trial questionnaire. Ahead of the hearing, Alex Spiro, Musk’s lawyer, said the sheet showed “not only that a vast majority of potential jurors hold ill-will toward Mr. Musk. but that they are not afraid to declare it proudly and vividly to the court.” However, Judge Chen didn’t buy Spiro’s argument. Alluding to the recently concluded Theranos trial, Chen said a fellow judge in a nearby courthouse was able to assemble an “unbiased” jury to decide whether Elizabeth Holmes was guilty of criminal charges. He also dismissed the idea of moving the case to Texas, noting Tesla’s main office was located in California when Tesla shareholders sued Musk.

Meta has filed a lawsuit against Voyager Labs, which it has accused of creating tens of thousands of fake accounts to scrape data from more than 600,000 Facebook users' profiles. It says the surveillance company pulled information such as posts, likes, friend lists, photos, and comments, along with other details from groups and pages. Meta claims that Voyager masked its activity using its Surveillance Software, and that the company has also scraped data from Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Telegram to sell and license for profit.

In the complaint, which was obtained by Gizmodo, Meta has asked a judge to permanently ban Voyager from Facebook and Instagram. "As a direct result of Defendant’s unlawful actions, Meta has suffered and continues to suffer irreparable harm for which there is no adequate remedy at law, and which will continue unless Defendant’s actions are enjoined," the filing reads. Meta said Voyager's actions have caused it "to incur damages, including investigative costs, in an amount to be proven at trial."

Meta claims that Voyager scraped data from accounts belonging to "employees of non-profit organizations, universities, news media organizations, healthcare facilities, the armed forces of the United States, and local, state, and federal government agencies, as well as full-time parents, retirees, and union members." The company noted in a blog post it disabled accounts linked to Voyager and that filed the suit to enforce its terms and policies.

"Companies like Voyager are part of an industry that provides scraping services to anyone regardless of the users they target and for what purpose, including as a way to profile people for criminal behavior," Jessica Romero, Meta's director of platform enforcement and litigation, wrote. "This industry covertly collects information that people share with their community, family and friends, without oversight or accountability, and in a way that may implicate people’s civil rights."

In 2021, The Guardian reported that the Los Angeles Police Department had tested Voyager's social media surveillance tools in 2019. The company is said to have told the department that police could use the software to track the accounts of a suspect's friends on social media, and that the system could predict crimes before they took place by making assumptions about a person's activity.

According to The Guardian, Voyager has suggested factors like Instagram usernames denoting Arab pride or tweeting about Islam could indicate someone is leaning toward extremism. Other companies, such as Palantir, have worked on predictive policing tech. Critics such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation claim that tech can't predict crime and that algorithms merely perpetuate existing biases.

Data scraping is an issue that Meta has to take seriously. In 2021, it sued an individual for allegedly scraping data on more than 178 million users. Last November, the Irish Data Protection Commission fined the company €265 million ($277 million) for failing to stop bad actors from obtaining millions of people's phone numbers and other data, which were published elsewhere online. The regulator said Meta failed to comply with GDPR data protection rules. 

Instacart will pay workers $5.1 million as part of a settlement after it allegedly failed to provide some benefits, as The San Francisco Chronicle reports. San Francisco accused the company of violating healthcare and paid sick leave ordinances. The company, which has not admitted to wrongdoing, will pay an additional $150,000 to cover the city's legal costs and pay for a settlement administrator to distribute the funds.

“Instacart has always properly classified shoppers as independent contractors, giving them the ability to set their own schedule and earn on their own terms,” Instacart said in a statement. “We remain committed to continuing to serve customers across San Francisco while also protecting access to the flexible earnings opportunities Instacart shoppers consistently say they want.”

People who worked as independent contractors for Instacart in the city between February 2017 and December 2020 are eligible for payments based on how many hours they worked. San Francisco estimates that between 6,000 and 7,000 people are affected by the settlement. The city and Instacart previously reached a similar settlement that covered an earlier time period. San Francisco has settled a benefits-related case with DoorDash too.

After December 15th, 2020, Instacart workers were subject to Proposition 22, which afforded them some benefits without the company having to define them as employees. An Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled in 2021 that the measure was unconstitutional, but it remains in force while Instacart, DoorDash, Uber, Lyft and other gig companies who bankrolled Prop 22 appeal the decision. Another suit — filed by San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego — claims that Uber and Lyft drivers should have been classed as workers until Prop 22 passed.

In mid-2021, medical technology company Masimo sued Apple over the Watch Series 6's blood oxygen monitoring capabilities. Masimo accused the tech giant of infringing on five of its pulse oximeter patents after introducing a device that has the ability to measure blood oxygen saturation. Now, a US International Trade Commission (ITC) judge has ruled that Apple did indeed infringe on one of Masimo's pulse oximeter patents. 

While the judge has also concluded that the tech giant did not infringe on the other four patents involved in the case, the ITC will now reportedly examine whether to impose an import ban on Apple Watches with the feature, as Masimo had requested when it filed the lawsuit. Newer Apple Watches, namely the Series 7 and 8, Ultra and SE, have blood oxygen monitoring features, so the ITC's decision will also affect them. 

Masimo CEO Joe Kiani told MD+DI in a statement that his company is happy that the judge "took this critical first step toward accountability." Kiani continued by saying that "Apple has similarly infringed on other companies' technologies" and that the "ruling exposes Apple as a company that takes other companies' innovations and repackages them."

Meanwhile, Apple accused Masimo of being the one that copied its intellectual property in its statement to the publication. "At Apple, our teams work tirelessly to create products and services that empower users with industry-leading health, wellness, and safety features. Masimo is attempting to take advantage of these many innovations by introducing a device that copies Apple Watch and infringes on our intellectual property, while also trying to eliminate competition from the market. We respectfully disagree with today’s decision, and look forward to a full review by the commission," a spokesperson said. 

The judge's decision was only an initial ruling that reflects the ITC's findings during its investigation, and the final ruling for the case won't be handed down until May 10th. 

Elon Musk has asked a federal judge to move his upcoming Tesla shareholder trial out of San Francisco. Per the Associated Press, Alex Spiro, the billionaire’s personal lawyer, filed the request late Friday, less than two weeks before the trial is scheduled to kick off on January 17th. Musk’s legal team argues “a substantial portion” of the potential jury pool in San Francisco is likely to hold a bias against Musk due to recent media coverage criticizing his actions at Twitter and the seemingly never-ending layoffs at the company. Musk has asked to move the trial to Texas, which has been home to Tesla headquarters since late 2021.

The class action lawsuit involves “false and misleading” statements Musk made in 2018 when he said he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. Musk’s now-infamous “funding secured” tweet landed the billionaire in trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, eventually leading to a $40 million settlement with the agency. The shareholders involved in the suit won an early victory last spring when federal judge Edward Chen concluded that Musk had “recklessly made the statements with knowledge as to their falsity.” The upcoming trial will determine whether Musk’s tweet affected the automaker’s stock price and if he should be held accountable for potential damages.

“Musk’s concerns are unfounded and his motion is meritless,” Nicholas Porritt, one of the lawyers representing Tesla shareholders, told the Associated Press. “The Northern District of California is the proper venue for this lawsuit and where it has been actively litigated for over four years.” On Saturday, Judge Chen told the two sides he would hear Musk’s request on January 13th.

Google has turned to India’s Supreme Court as a “last hope” to block an order that has the potential to reshape the Android ecosystem. Last October, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) fined Google $161.9 million and barred the search giant from requiring OEMs to preinstall Google apps and services on their phones. On Wednesday, an appeals tribunal rejected the company’s request to block the ruling, which is scheduled to go into effect on January 19th. According to court documents seen by Reuters, Google filed a challenge against the tribunal’s decision with the country’s top court on Saturday. The company reportedly sees the effort as its last and best hope at preventing the CCI’s order from impacting its business. Google did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

While the $161.9 million fine is tiny for Google, the order is likely to force the company to change its deals with Android manufacturers dramatically. The CCI seeks to prevent Google from including “anti-fragmentation” clauses that bar Android forks. The order would also force the company to allow third-party app stores on Google Play, and allow users to uninstall first-party apps they don’t want on their phones. India is a critical market for Google. The country is home to about 606.6 million smartphone users, and about 97 percent of the phones in India run Android. In other words, the company can’t afford to exit the market.

A court has blocked a rate hike that would have increased pay for New York City Uber and Lyft drivers. Uber sued the city's Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) in December, claiming it used a flawed methodology to determine the per-minute and per-mile rate increases. Manhattan state court Justice Arthur Engoron agreed. “It’s just not enough to say there’s inflation and 100 drivers said gas prices shot up,” Engoron, a former taxi driver in his college days, said, according to Bloomberg.

In November, the TLC unanimously approved the city's first metered fare increases in a decade, including for ridesharing trips. Per-minute rates were slated to go up by 7.4 percent and per-mile rates by 24 percent. Under those planned hikes, a trip of 7.5 miles that took 30 minutes would have earned a ridesharing driver at least $27.15, an increase of more than $2.50 compared with current rates.

Uber argued that the rate increases would result in higher fares for customers while harming its reputation. A judge granted a temporary restraining order to pause the rate hikes a few days after Uber filed suit and before they came into effect on December 19th.

“Drivers do critical work and deserve to be paid fairly, but rates should be calculated in a way that is transparent, consistent and predictable,” Uber spokesperson Josh Gold told Bloomberg. “Existing TLC rules continue to provide for an annual review tied to the rate of inflation, which will take place in March.”

The company said implementing the pay raise would cost it between $21 million and $23 million per month. For the July to September quarter, Uber reported a net loss of $1.2 billion.

"We call on the Taxi and Limousine Commission to immediately redo the rules so drivers do not have to wait one day longer for their raise. A few missing words in a Statement of Basis and Purpose does not justify denying a raise meant to help thousands of drivers pay their rent and put food on the table for their families," Bhairavi Desai, executive director of The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, told Engadget in a statement. "Shame on Uber for spending millions on this heartless lawsuit only to deny drivers an increase of $1.66 more on an average trip. Uber woke a sleeping giant. This raise belongs to the drivers and we will not rest until it's back in our hands."

Crypto lender Celsius Network is still facing the consequences of its tumultuous 2022 long after it declared bankruptcy. New York State Attorney General Letitia James has sued former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky for allegedly defrauding investors out of "billions of dollars" in cryptocurrency. The executive purportedly misled customers about Celsius' worsening financial health, and didn't register either as a salesperson or as a commodities and securities dealer.

The Attorney General's office claims Mashinsky falsely boasted of low-risk investments and reliable lending partners while "routinely" exposing investors to high-risk approaches that resulted in losses the company chief hid from customers. He also made untrue statements about safety, strategies and user numbers, according to the lawsuit. Celsius' ex-chief supposedly deceived hundreds of thousands of investors (over 26,000 in the state), some of which James says suffered "financial ruin."

New York hopes to ban Mashinsky from doing business in the state. It also wants him to pay damages and otherwise compensate investors. In a statement to Engadget, Celsius would only reiterate that Mashinsky resigned as CEO in September and is "no longer involved" in managing the firm.

Celsius is one of the more prominent casualties of last year's crypto crash. Its token's value plunged from $7 in 2021 to just $3 last spring. That was particularly damaging to a company that offered loans with little collateral and promised yields as high as 18.6 percent — it didn't have the resources needed to endure the crisis. It tried freezing withdrawals last June to stabilize its assets, but opted for bankruptcy the following month to restructure and otherwise give it a better chance to regroup.

The lawsuit isn't likely to be the end of the fallout. Several states are investigating Celsius' practices, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has been in touch. Celsius isn't alone in dealing with legal repercussions. Just this week, the crypto exchange Coinbase reached a $100 million settlement with New York over alleged financial rule violations. However, it's notable that the state is going after Mashinsky directly, not just the business he once ran.

Apple is the second tech giant today to receive a fine over personalized ads. France's National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) has issued an €8 million (roughly $8.5 million) penalty over allegations Apple automatically collected identifying data from App Store visitors using iOS 14.6 without their permission, helping the company target ads. The firm was profiting from violations of data protection law, according to officials.

You could turn off the ad targeting, but it was enabled by default and couldn't be disabled without wading through multiple menu levels, CNIL added. That reportedly made it impossible for users to give proper consent. Apple has since changed its practices, and CNIL said it conducted "several" checks between 2021 and 2022 to make sure the company was honoring data rules. France launched its investigation in March 2021.

We've asked Apple for comment. As 9to5Mac noted, Apple told Financial Times' Patrick McGee in a statement that it was "disappointed" with the decision and planned an appeal. The iPhone maker argued that its Search Ads system went "further" than any rival in offering choice over targeted ads, and didn't track user cross third-party apps or websites.

Apple has had a contentious relationship with French regulators. In 2020, the country's competition authority issued a fine equivalent to $1.2 billion (now down to $364.6 million) for alleged antitrust abuses in its distribution chain. The company also received a $27.3 million fine over iPhone performance throttling that same year. While the French government defended Apple's iOS 14 anti-tracking measures against industry pressure, it's evident that the brand remains under close scrutiny.