On Wednesday, Disney and Universal descended into the intensifying fray over generative AI, filing a lawsuit for copyright infringement against a prominent AI startup, thereby belatedly aligning Hollywood with the frontline battle. The target of their legal wrath was Midjourney, an AI image generator boasting tens of millions of registered users. This 110-page lawsuit alleges that Midjourney "indulged unabashedly" in the unauthorized use of numerous copyrighted works to train its software, enabling users to conjure up images (and soon, videos) that brazenly appropriate Disney's and Universal's iconic characters.
"Midjourney embodies the epitome of copyright freeloaders and an insatiable sinkhole of plagiarism," declared the studios in the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Midjourney remained mute in response to requests for commentary.
Midjourney, introduced in 2022, is among the AI startups that nourish their software with data scavenged from the internet and beyond, frequently without compensating the creators. This practice has sparked lawsuits from authors, artists, record labels, news outfits, among numerous others. (Notably, The New York Times has also sued OpenAI and its partner Microsoft for copyright infringement, claims denied by both parties under the banner of "fair use").
However, Disney and Universal mark the first major Hollywood studios to initiate copyright infringement suits. Creative professionals in the entertainment hub have grown increasingly exasperated by the studios' silence on the matter. "Their failure to protest the theft of copyrighted material by AI companies amounts to complicity," Meredith Stiehm, President of the Writers Guild of America West, told The Los Angeles Times in February.
The Midjourney lawsuit reveals that Disney and Universal, the two most influential traditional entertainment giants, have been biding their time strategically. While precision-targeting Midjourney for violating the copyrights of renowned characters like Darth Vader, the Minions, the "Frozen" princesses, Shrek, and Homer Simpson, the lawsuit serves as a warning shot to AI companies at large.
The studios framed generative AI theft as a crisis that "jeopardizes the foundational incentives of U.S. copyright law, driving American leadership in movies, television, and other creative arts." According to recent economic data from the Motion Picture Association, a Hollywood lobbying group, the U.S. film and television industry supports 2.3 million jobs and shells out $229 billion in annual wages.
"We hold a favorable view of AI technology's potential and are optimistic about its responsible utilization as a catalyst for human creativity," Horacio Gutierrez, Disney's General Counsel, said in an email. "Yet, piracy remains piracy, and the fact that it's perpetrated by an AI company doesn't mitigate its infringing nature."
Kim Harris, General Counsel of NBCUniversal (which encompasses the Universal movie studio), echoed in a separate email, "We are initiating this legal action today to safeguard the arduous efforts of countless artists who entertain and inspire us, and the substantial investments we make in our content."
Disney sent Midjourney a "cease and desist" notice last year, to which the AI firm acknowledged receipt but offered no further response, according to the lawsuit. Universal followed suit with a similar notice last month, to no avail.
The suit seeks damages from Midjourney, sans a specific monetary demand. Disney and Universal also petition the court to halt Midjourney's "forthcoming video service sans adequate copyright protection measures."
Midjourney stands as one of the most sought-after text-to-image generators: Users merely type a description, and within seconds, the bot churns out images. Competitors include Stability AI and DALL-E, developed by OpenAI. Midjourney offers subscriptions ranging from $10 for a basic plan to $120 for a "mega" plan, based on processing speed and other factors. It amassed approximately $300 million in revenue last year, a leap from $50 million in 2022.
For at least a year and a half, Midjourney has garnered headlines for generating striking images of copyrighted material. For instance, typing "animated toys" into Midjourney yielded near-perfect replicas of Buzz Lightyear and other "Toy Story" characters, a film produced by Pixar, owned by Disney, as reported by The New York Times in February 2024.
