Photographer sues Getty Images for $1B for being billed for her own photo (2016)
As a business model it makes perverse sense:1. Use bots to vacuum up as many images as you can online, and claim ownership.2. Use bots to search for infringement and automatically send claim letters against them.3. For any pushback, have a team of lawyers and clerks of various grades to deal with situations as they escalate. Push or capitulate after sizing up the opponent.Most people either just want it over, or don't have the means to fight back for any length of time. The money you make from such a scheme would far outweigh the legal costs due to the scale of the automated income.It would only become problematic if someone else started a rival company, at which point they'd need to set up an oligopoly agreement to avoid destroying one another with their bots.