If Getty Images has a problem with that, they should try having a working robots.txt. Instead they have one that's seemingly been copied from a porn site.
Ah yes, because robots.txt is definitely a valid deterrent for preventing people from stealing your images and using them for their own purpose!
A watermark is the other good way around it, and it looks like that is working.
These image sites might have a strong case. AI art can be considered a competitor and their copyrighted material was scraped and used to harm their business.
Do these image sets not contain images found only via robots.txt excluded urls?
LAION respects robots.txt exclusions. Just think of it as Google Image Search.
Unfortunately copyright law doesn't contain a "you didn't tell me not to take your images" affirmative defense.
What would a Getty "working" robots.txt look like? For their images to not be permitted to be indexed? Being able to find their images is the entire point of the service. As is the case with almost every content creator/platform ever.
Signaling that you allow indexing is no opt-in for any use or abuse.
This could be an attempt to keep logs and scrapes clear of explicit material, especially if Getty offers upload features to paying customers (I don’t know, but I did run a whiteboard site where one of the features allowed people to upload images, and saw first hand what some people do.) This doesn’t look anything like porn hub’s robots.txt…
don't worry, all the VC founders will exit with their startup funds long before the lawsuits come in!
What if the prompt explicitly asks for an image from an image bank? For an image with a particular kind of watermark? I wonder if the dataset was marked up for that.
Also intrtesting: a prompt asking for a well-known image, without a watermark.