Google announced on Thursday that it will protect its generative AI customers against any intellectual property claims made on the data used or output served by Google-hosted AI models. By extending protection in its cloud and workspace environments, Google joins the list of technology firms that have recently announced IP support for using their own generative AI tools. These include companies like IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, and Adobe. Google said the protection would span across all Google environments using the Duet AI collaborator, and the company's homegrown generative AI engine Vertex AI. The indemnity clause by leading technology companies will likely bring in hope as generative AI's challenges over privacy, security, and intellectual property violations peak.

Artists, illustrators and photographers have often led the way in embracing new technology. The concerns that creators such as Harry Woodgate have about AI programs ('It's the opposite of art': why illustrators are furious about AI, 23 January) that "rely entirely on the pirated intellectual property of countless working artists, photographers, illustrators and other rights holders" must be heeded. The UK's £116bn cultural and creative industries have an opportunity to be world leaders in developing and sustaining talent in emerging technologies, but the government must ensure that artists' rights are protected.

Shutterstock, one of the internet's biggest sources of stock photos and illustrations, is now offering its customers the option to generate their own AI images. In October, the company announced a partnership with OpenAI, the creator of the wildly popular and controversial DALL-E AI tool. Now, the results of that deal are in beta testing and available to all paying Shutterstock users. The new platform is available in "every language the site offers," and comes included with customers' existing licensing packages, according to a press statement from the company. And, according to Gizmodo's own test, every text prompt you feed Shutterstock's machine results in four images, ostensibly tailored to your request.

If you find a photo in an article, it probably came from Shutterstock, the largest source of online stock images. Recently, it opened access to AI-generated pictures. The new feature came after the company partnered with OpenAI, the creator of the popular AI image creator DALL-E. It is available to all users with paid Shutterstock subscriptions in "every language the site offers." Also, they do not have to worry about potential intellectual property issues.

Getty is bringing its intellectual property rights infringement complaint to London's High Court of Justice. Stability AI already faces a separate major legal battle begun this week when a group of artists filed a class action lawsuit in California against it, along with Stable Diffusion platforms Midjourney and DeviantArt. Some of the billions of pictures in the LAION-5B dataset employed to train Stable Diffusion may have been scraped from the web, including Getty's servers, without their creators' awareness. Notably, Stability AI has suggested there will be an opt-out option for any artist whose work might be used to train new iterations of Stable Diffusion. Getty hasn't mentioned any financial compensation or desire to shut down Stable Diffusion in its case.

Getty Images claims that Stability AI, the creator of Stable Diffusion, used images obtained from Getty Images to train their algorithms without obtaining proper licensing. This definition applies to photographs, art, and images that the artists allege have been infringed. First, let's discuss how the above-mentioned artificial intelligence models work. In general, deep neural networks and machine learning models are trained in a method that has its similarities to humans learning. Programmers do not instruct the algorithm to specifically do what it does, or in this case, do not get the algorithms to copy specific elements from original pictures when constructing a new image.

"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." 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.

In addition to concerns about AI-generated content taking human jobs, it seems there are also questions regarding the material these tools are trained on. AI-powered content-generating tools have seen their popularity explode in recent months, but it hasn't stopped the controversy that surrounds them. That's been especially true of systems that create art. The problem was highlighted last September when the Colorado State Fair's contest for emerging digital artists was by Jason M. Allen, who created his entry using Midjourney. Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are trained on billions of images.

The continuing development of AI systems represents a profound achievement of the digital age that brings with it tremendous opportunities. In fact, many in the creative industry are already using or plan to use AI for the creation of a wide range of works that benefit society. But as with many advances in technology, these new opportunities come with challenges. This licensing activity is evidence of existing markets for TDM. It is important that the conditions of those licenses are respected and that they are not undermined by new exceptions that excuse unauthorized uses.

Riding the generative AI wave, Picsart, the developer behind various photo and video editing apps for the web and mobile devices, is introducing a new iOS app that transforms photos and drawings into digital art. Called SketchAI, the app lets users sketch a picture or upload an existing image and apply different artistic styles to it. SketchAI is easy enough to use. It features several pre-selected styles that can applied to creations, including ink drawing, pencil sketch, and the artist-inspired "Da Vinci" and "Van Gogh." In addition to sketching or uploading a photo, users can add a prompt describing an image (e.g.