Hugging Face sued for copyright infringement for hosting & distributing copyrighted images, used for AI training.

[highplainsdem]

If you're not familiar with Hugging Face: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugging_Face


Posts from Ed Newton-Rex:

Hugging Face has just been sued for alleged copyright infringement for hosting & distributing copyrighted images, used for AI training.

🧵 1/3

— Ed Newton-Rex (@ednewtonrex.bsky.social) 2026-07-06T11:29:37.386Z

It's been almost a *year* since I flagged to their CEO that they were distributing copyrighted works that their co-founders seemed to have uploaded themselves.

He said "Ok let us take a look and get back to you".

2/3

— Ed Newton-Rex (@ednewtonrex.bsky.social) 2026-07-06T11:29:37.387Z

A year on, that dataset is still live, being downloaded 11k+ times per month.

/end

— Ed Newton-Rex (@ednewtonrex.bsky.social) 2026-07-06T11:29:37.388Z

Note that there are other defendants - Stability AI and Runway AI, both well known for training AI on stolen intellectual property - and Deviant Art, which until a few years ago was a useful platform for REAL artists, but quickly became a favorite site for fake artists using AI and now has its own "create AI art" for joining the AI-using fraud squad, and is apparently stealing intellectual property like otherAI companies.

All these companies should be sued out of existence, and their owners and managers who are more directly responsible for the theft of IP should be prosecuted as the criminals they are.

[highplainsdem]

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