(Reuters) - A group of visual artists has sued artificial intelligence companies Stability AI Ltd, Midjourney Inc, and DeviantArt Inc for copyright infringement, adding to a fast-emerging line of intellectual property disputes over AI-generated work.

Stability AI's Stable Diffusion software copies billions of copyrighted images to enable Midjourney and DeviantArt's AI to create images in those artists' styles without permission, according to the proposed class-action lawsuit filed Friday in San Francisco federal court.

The artists' lawyers, the Joseph Saveri Law Firm and Matthew Butterick, filed a separate proposed class action lawsuit in November against Microsoft's GitHub Inc and its business partner OpenAI Inc for allegedly scraping copyrighted source code without permission to train AI systems.

Butterick said in a blog post that since the November lawsuit they had "heard from people all over the world — especially writers, artists, programmers, and other creators — who are concerned about AI systems being trained on vast amounts of copyrighted work with no consent, no credit, and no compensation."

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Getty Images also announced Tuesday that it had initiated legal proceedings against Stability AI in the United Kingdom over Stability's alleged copying of millions of its images.

Stability AI "chose to ignore viable licensing options and long‑standing legal protections in pursuit of their stand‑alone commercial interests," Getty Images said in a statement.

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