Assuming AI copyright rules are the same in every country
Where the training happened can decide who wins. The law does not change at the border, it changes at the server.
Not legal advice. Sally roasts behaviour and use-cases in general, never your specific situation, and nothing here replaces a real lawyer. The cases are real; what you do about them is between you and someone licensed to tell you.
Applying one country's understanding of AI training and copyright to a project that spans multiple jurisdictions.
Getty Images v. Stability AI
[2025] EWHC (UK High Court) · UK (High Court)
Getty sued Stability AI in the UK over training on its images and reproduced watermarks.
Getty largely lost, abandoning its primary training-infringement claims, and the court held model weights are not an infringing copy. A sharp contrast with US theories. The separate US case is ongoing.
In a UK case, a court held that AI model weights are not a copy of the training images, and a major rights-holder largely lost after abandoning its primary training-infringement claims partly because it could not show training happened in the UK. That is a notable contrast with how the same questions are being argued in the US.
So the same facts can produce different outcomes depending on where the training ran and whose law applies. Treating one jurisdiction's answer as universal is how cross-border AI projects walk into surprises.
“You assumed copyright works the same everywhere, which is adorable, and the kind of assumption that funds entire law firms.”
- 01Map which jurisdictions your training, your data, and your users actually touch.
- 02Get advice for each relevant country rather than assuming one answer travels.
- 03Track where compute and data physically sit. It can be decisive.
Not legal advice. General commentary on a use-case, not your situation. Talk to a real lawyer before you act.