Disney and Universal are suing the AI company Midjourney for copyright infringement and filed a lawsuit on Wednesday. It was filed in the United States District Court Central District of California.
This is the first time the two major Hollywood studios have brought an intellectual property theft case through artificial intelligence to court.
The two entertainment titans say Midjourney is selling images “that blatantly incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters,” from “Star Wars,” “Shrek,” “The Simpsons,” “Cars,” “Frozen,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Despicable Me” and more.
Both Disney and Universal claim they’ve asked Midjourney to stop this and at least take “technological measures, which other AI services have implemented” to prevent this from happening again. However, the companies say the Midjourney “is focused on its own bottom line and ignored Plaintiffs’ demands.”
The lawsuit stated that Midjourney generated $300 million in revenue from subscribers last year.
“Instead of stopping its infringement, Midjourney has continued to release new versions of its Image Service, which, according to Midjourney’s founder and CEO, have even higher quality infringing images,” the lawsuit stated.
Both Disney and Universal are demanding a jury trial. They called the San Francisco-headquartered company “the quintessential copyright-free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism.”
“Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing,” the suit said. “Midjourney’s conduct misappropriates Disney’s and Universal’s intellectual property and threatens to upend the bedrock incentives of U.S. copyright law that drive American leadership in movies, television, and other creative arts.”
KTLA 5 has reached out to Midjourney for a statement on this, but has not received a response.
