Karla Ortiz: Concept Artist Suing Over AI Training Data

Karla Ortiz is a concept artist whose credits run from film and games to Magic: The Gathering. She is also a named plaintiff in Andersen v. Stability AI, a suit against AI image companies over training data that included artists' work. Her own copyright claims were dismissed in October 2023, and the case was still in pre-trial discovery on October 21, 2026.

Who Karla Ortiz Is and What Her Case Is About

Karla Ortiz is a concept artist, illustrator and fine artist, and one of three original named plaintiffs in Andersen v. Stability AI. The court dismissed her own copyright claims in October 2023. The defendants argued her images were not registered with the Copyright Office, and the plaintiffs did not contest it.

Her own About page says she has "over 10 years of professional experience" as a concept artist. The three original plaintiffs were Ortiz, Sarah Andersen and Kelly McKernan. The case was filed on January 13, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The suit is an artists' challenge to AI image companies over training data that included their work. Ortiz is a named plaintiff, and her professional record is set out in the next section. For the wider legal fight over AI and creative work, read our guide to AI art theft.

Telling Her Apart From Two Other Ortiz Names

On the search results read on October 21, 2026, Google's AI Overview confused Karla Ortiz with the actress Carla Ortiz. They are different people. Carla Ortiz is a Bolivian actress, model and producer, born 2 December 1978 in Cochabamba, according to her Wikipedia page.

Her films include Olvidados (2013) and The Curse of the Mayans (2017). She has no connection to AI litigation.

A second name collision exists. The English Wikipedia article titled 'Karla Ortiz' is about Karla Beatriz Ortiz Oyola, a Peruvian volleyball player born 20 October 1991 in Lima. The concept artist does not have that article.

Her Professional Work

Her work spans film, games, television, Magic: The Gathering, book illustration and gallery shows. Her About page names many of the studios and publishers, and the Magic count comes from Scryfall's card database.

Film, Games and Television

Her own site lists film, games and TV work for Paragon Studios and NCsoft, Ubisoft, Kabam, Blizzard, ArenaNet, Netflix, Cliffhanger Games (EA), Industrial Light & Magic, Marvel Film Studios, Universal Studios and HBO.

NPR reports she has worked on Marvel properties including Guardians of the Galaxy, Loki, Black Panther and Doctor Strange. The NPR interview is the source for the Marvel credits above.

Magic: The Gathering

A direct query of Scryfall's card database for Karla Ortiz as artist returns 62 printings. Those printings cover 19 distinct card titles, including Liliana, Heretical Healer // Liliana, Defiant Necromancer and its emblem.

Her earliest Magic card in that data is Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, from the set Theros, released September 27, 2013. Other cards include Brago, King Eternal, Ghoulcaller Gisa, Vindicate, Daxos of Meletis and Deathcap Cultivator.

A fan outlet reports 18 cards and one emblem, a different count. This page uses the Scryfall figure because it comes from a direct database query.

Illustration and Fine Art

Her illustration clients include Wizards of the Coast, Ace Books, Tor Books, Orbit Books and CB+P. Her site also mentions cover art for independent authors and toy makers.

As a fine artist she has shown at Studio Gallery SF, Safehouse studios shows, Thinkspace Art Gallery, Nucleus Gallery, Spoke Art Gallery, Hashimoto Contemporary and Galerie Arludik in Paris, France. Her site sells prints directly and links an online concept-art class, The Live-Action Character, on Schoolism.

Her About page calls her award winning. It does not name the award.

The Andersen v. Stability AI Case

The case is Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd., Case No. 3:23-cv-00201, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. United States District Judge William Horsley Orrick III presides, and Magistrate Judge Lisa J. Cisneros is assigned. The docket lists the cause as 17:504 Copyright Infringement, and the plaintiffs made the jury demand.

The amended complaint names Stability AI Ltd., Stability AI, Inc., Midjourney, Inc., DeviantArt, Inc. and Runway AI, Inc. as defendants. Runway was added after the original complaint. The wider picture on lawsuits outside the United States is in our guide to AI copyright lawsuits outside the US.

What the October 2023 Order Did

On October 30, 2023, Judge Orrick granted the motions to dismiss in full, except for one direct copyright infringement claim against Stability. The order gave the plaintiffs thirty days to amend. The October 30, 2023 order is available as a PDF.

In the same order, Ortiz's and McKernan's Copyright Act claims were dismissed with prejudice. The defendants argued neither had registered their images with the Copyright Office. The plaintiffs did not contest that point. At oral argument, plaintiffs' counsel said they were not asserting copyright claims for those two plaintiffs.

The original complaint had alleged Ortiz owned a copyright interest "in at least twelve Works that were used as Training Images." The October 2023 order did not keep that claim alive.

What the August 2024 Order Kept Alive

On August 12, 2024, Judge Orrick ruled on the amended complaint in a second order. The DMCA claims were dismissed with prejudice. The unjust enrichment claims were dismissed with leave to amend. The motions to dismiss the Copyright Act claims were denied.

Midjourney's motion to dismiss the Lanham Act claims was also denied. DeviantArt's motion was granted on the breach of contract and implied covenant claims, and those were dismissed with prejudice. The August 2024 order is available as a PDF.

The amended complaint re-asserted claims for the three original plaintiffs. It added seven more artists: Hawke Southworth, Grzegorz Rutkowski, Gregory Manchess, Gerald Brom, Jingna Zhang, Julia Kaye and Adam Ellis. The court noted that this was done "without the court permission."

The amended pleading brings a direct copyright infringement claim against Runway AI for training Stable Diffusion 1.5. That claim is brought on behalf of the "LAION-5B Registered Plaintiffs, LAION-5B Subclass, and Karla Ortiz Individually."

Ortiz is also one of five "Midjourney Named Plaintiffs." The other four are Rutkowski, Andersen, Brom and Kaye. Midjourney disclosed these artists' names as artists whose works were included and could be recreated through its product. The five assert Lanham Act claims for false endorsement and trade dress.

The plaintiffs allege their names appeared on a list of 4,700 artists that Midjourney's CEO posted on Discord. They allege the list was promoted as describing the styles its AI product could produce.

The court also rejected Midjourney's argument that plaintiffs must name the specific registered works used in training. The court held that "that level of detail is not required for plaintiffs to state their claims." It pointed to the size of the LAION datasets and the disputed transparency of the "open source" software at the heart of Stable Diffusion.

The record on Ortiz's own copyright claims is mixed. The October 2023 order dismissed her Copyright Act claims with prejudice. The August 2024 amended pleading names her individually in a direct infringement claim against Runway AI. The sources read for this page do not explain how that happened.

The court warned that surviving dismissal is not the same as winning. The allegations only "help plaintiffs cross the plausibility threshold." Whether plaintiffs can prove their claims "is a different matter and those claims will be tested on an evidentiary basis at summary judgment."

Where the Case Stands in October 2026

The live docket was last updated at 3:22 a.m. on October 21, 2026, and the last known filing is dated October 19, 2026. On the entries read, the case is in pre-trial discovery, with active discovery-letter briefing and sealing motions.

The entries read include no merits ruling, no class-certification ruling and no fair-use ruling. On September 28, 2026, Judge Orrick granted the plaintiffs' motion to modify the case schedule. The order requires the dispositive motion and class-certification hearing to be "heard by September 29, 2027."

On October 6, 2026, Judge Orrick denied a stipulation seeking more time for joint discovery letters. The parties had filed the stipulation at 4:22 p.m. on October 2, 2026, instead of the ordered joint letters. The court refused "yet more time."

On October 16 and October 19, 2026, Magistrate Judge Cisneros ordered plaintiffs to file a specific email before an October 20, 2026 hearing on plaintiffs' sanctions motion. A later order granted a stipulation resolving plaintiffs' motion for discovery sanctions against DeviantArt.

Filings from September and October 2026 are captioned as filed by Sarah Andersen, Gerald Brom, Adam Ellis, Julia Kaye, Gregory Manchess, Karla Ortiz, Grzegorz Rutkowski and Jingna Zhang. Plaintiffs' filings are signed by Joseph Saveri.

Some secondary case trackers circulate trial dates. None was confirmed against the docket, so this page prints no trial date.

Nothing has been decided on the merits. For the broader legal question, read our explainer on whether AI is copyright infringement. The posture changes week to week, so read the docket before you cite any status here.

What Karla Ortiz Argues About Consent, Credit and Compensation

Ortiz frames the issue as consent, credit and compensation. She testified as a visual artist at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property hearing on July 12, 2023. The hearing was titled "Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property, Part II: Copyright."

Also testifying were Jeff Harleston, General Counsel of Universal Music Group, Ben Brooks, Head of Public Policy at Stability AI, Prof. Matthew Sag of Emory Law, and Dana Rao, Adobe's witness. The Copyright Alliance summary of the hearing lists the witnesses.

Choice Over Licensing

Senator Hirono asked about licensing her work to AI developers. Ortiz answered: 'It's about being able to have that choice. And artists don't have that right now.'

Training Data Disclosure

She argued that AI developers generally do not disclose their training datasets. As a result, copyright owners often cannot tell whether their works were ingested.

The Opt-Out Burden

She argued that creators should not have to carry the burden of technical opt-out measures. She said technical experts told her such filters can easily be bypassed.

Her Account on NPR

On NPR she said generative AI 'took away my ability to consent to being a part of this technology.' She said her credit and any compensation were taken away too.

She said she searched the LAION dataset and found her entire fine-art body of work in it. She called the situation 'existential' for artists.

She said she still would not use a model built ethically, trained only on public-domain or licensed data. Outsourcing the creative process, she said, 'feels empty to me.' Readers looking for work made without AI can start with our guide on how to find non-AI art.

The NPR piece also discusses an AI title sequence for Secret Invasion. The piece does not record Ortiz commenting on that sequence, so this page attributes no quote about it to her.

What the Other Side Argues

The defendants argue that plaintiffs must identify the specific registered works used in training. They also argue that outputs resembling an artist could come from training on unregistered works, or from using only unprotected elements of the artists' work. The court did not resolve those points on the merits. It ruled at the pleading stage.

The strongest factual point against Ortiz personally is the registration gap. As of the October 2023 order, her images were not registered with the Copyright Office. Plaintiffs' counsel told the court they were not asserting copyright claims for Ortiz or McKernan, and the court dismissed those claims with prejudice.

Not every claim went the artists' way. The DMCA claims and DeviantArt's contract claims were dismissed with prejudice. The unjust enrichment claims were dismissed with leave to amend, so the artists did not win a clean sweep.

Stability AI's Head of Public Policy, Ben Brooks, testified at the same July 2023 hearing as Ortiz. The industry was heard at that hearing alongside her. The sources read for this page do not include statements from the defendants outside the hearing and court filings.

Her Stake in the Case

Ortiz is a named plaintiff in a suit against Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway AI. Her interest in the outcome is on the record, and this page states it plainly.

The sources read do not show her taking money from AI companies. They also do not show her being paid by any advocacy organization. Her site points to studio concept art, illustration commissions, gallery sales, print sales and an online class. Other artists and groups in the backlash are mapped in our guide to who is fighting AI.

To follow what changes next, start with the live docket on CourtListener.

Sources

• Karla Ortiz's About page
• Scryfall card search for Karla Ortiz as artist
• Live CourtListener docket for Andersen v. Stability AI
• October 30, 2023 order (Dkt. 117)
• August 12, 2024 order (Dkt. 223)
• Copyright Alliance summary of the Senate IP Subcommittee hearing
• NPR interview with Karla Ortiz, via KUNC
• Wikipedia: Carla Ortiz
• Wikipedia: Karla Ortiz (the volleyball player)