Disney and Universal Sue Midjourney Over Alleged Copyright Infringement

Disney and Universal have accused the AI startup Midjourney of stealing and copying characters owned by the film companies.

“Midjourney is a typical copyright infringer and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” states the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

According to the accusation, the AI project used “countless” copyrighted works to train its software, then allowed users to generate images that “clearly imply and copy well-known Disney and Universal characters.”

The film companies included comparative photographs of original works and AI-generated copies in their lawsuit. Among them were Darth Vader from “Star Wars,” Elsa from “Frozen,” Homer from “The Simpsons,” Shrek, and other popular characters.

The lawsuit describes plagiarism by generative AI as a problem that “threatens to overturn the fundamental principles of American copyright law, which define U.S. leadership in film, television, and other creative arts.”

“We are optimistic about the prospects of AI technology and how it can be responsibly used as a tool to further human creativity. But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it is done by an AI company does not make it any less illegal,” said Disney’s chief counsel Horacio Gutierrez.

NBCUniversal representative Kim Harris called the lawsuit a fight for “the hard work of all the artists whose creativity entertains and inspires us, as well as the significant investments we make in our content.”

The corporations demanded compensation from Midjourney but did not specify an amount. They also asked the court to prohibit the AI firm from “offering its future video service without appropriate copyright protections.”

The documents highlight that the startup earned about $300 million in 2024. According to the studios, Midjourney also ignored pre-trial requests to cease violations.

Legal Nuances

In a conversation with BBC, Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh noted that U.S. intellectual property law allows the use of others’ works if the final result has new details.

However, in his view, many images created by Midjourney “seem to be just copies of copyrighted characters, which may be in different places or on a different background.”

“It doesn’t seem that they are transformed in any creative or inventive way,” Ghosh added.

Attorney Randy McCarthy of Hall Estill stated that “no lawsuit is flawless, and in this case, it concerns Disney and Universal”:

“There are several issues, such as Midjourney’s terms of service and the basic analysis of fair use, that the court must clarify before we can predict the likely outcome.”

Rights holders have long been battling AI companies. In September 2023, the Authors Guild of America accused OpenAI of using licensed works to train language models.

In August 2024, a class-action complaint was filed against the AI startup Anthropic in a California federal court over copyright violations.

In 2022, Disney researchers developed an AI tool for de-aging actors.