Major movie studios join fight against AI as Disney, Universal sue image-generator Midjourney

Disney and Universal have filed a copyright lawsuit against the popular artificial intelligence (AI) image-generator Midjourney.

This marks the first time major Hollywood companies have entered the legal battle over generative AI.

Copyright infringement claims

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Los Angeles, alleges that Midjourney pirated the libraries of the two Hollywood studios to generate and distribute “endless unauthorised copies” of their iconic characters, such as Darth Vader from Star Wars and the Minions from Despicable Me.

The studios described Midjourney as a “quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” stating that piracy remains piracy, regardless of whether the infringing content is created by AI or other technologies.

Additionally, the studios claimed that the San Francisco-based AI company ignored their requests to stop infringing on their copyrighted works and to implement technological measures to prevent such image generation.

Midjourney’s counter

In a 2022 interview with AP, Midjourney CEO David Holz likened his image-making service to a “search engine” that pulls in a wide array of images from across the internet.

He compared the copyright concerns surrounding the technology to how such laws have evolved alongside human creativity.

Holz argued that just as individuals can learn from others’ pictures to create similar works, AI systems should be afforded the same consideration.

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Growing frustration against AI developers

Major AI developers generally do not disclose their data sources, maintaining that the use of publicly accessible online text, images, and other media to train their systems is protected under the “fair use” doctrine of American copyright law.

The studios’ lawsuit joins a growing number of legal actions against AI platform developers, including OpenAI and Anthropic, in both San Francisco and New York.

Meanwhile, the first significant copyright trial involving the generative AI industry is currently underway in London, with Getty Images challenging the artificial intelligence company Stability AI.

With inputs from agencies