Disney and Universal sue AI firm Midjourney for copyright infringement

Shawn Chen · The Associated Press

· Posted: Jun 11, 2025 2:20 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

Disney and Universal person filed a copyright suit against fashionable artificial quality image-generator Midjourney, marking the archetypal clip large Hollywood companies person entered the ineligible conflict implicit generative AI.

Filed successful national territory tribunal successful Los Angeles connected Wednesday, the ailment claims Midjourney pirated the libraries of the 2 Hollywood studios to make and administer "endless unauthorized copies" of their famed characters, specified arsenic Darth Vader from Star Wars and the Minions from Despicable Me.

"Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism. Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing representation oregon video is made with AI oregon different exertion does not marque it immoderate little infringing," the companies authorities successful the complaint.

The studios besides claimed the San Francisco-based AI institution ignored their requests to halt infringing connected their copyrighted works and to instrumentality technological measures to halt specified representation generation.

Midjourney didn't instantly respond to a petition for remark Wednesday.

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In a 2022 interrogation with The Associated Press, Midjourney CEO David Holz described his image-making work arsenic "kind of similar a hunt engine," pulling successful a wide swath of images from crossed the internet. He compared copyright concerns astir the exertion with however specified laws person adapted to quality creativity.

"Can a idiosyncratic look astatine idiosyncratic else's representation and larn from it and marque a akin picture?" Holz said. "Obviously, it's allowed for people, and if it wasn't, past it would destruct the full nonrecreational creation industry. Probably the nonprofessional industry, too. To the grade that AIs are learning similar people, it's benignant of the aforesaid thing, and if the images travel retired differently, past it seems similar it's fine."

Major AI developers don't typically disclose their information sources but person argued that taking troves of publically accessible online text, images and different media to bid their AI systems is protected by the "fair use" doctrine of American copyright law.

The studios' case joins a increasing fig of lawsuits filed against developers of AI platforms — such arsenic OpenAI and Anthropic — successful San Francisco and New York.

Meanwhile, the archetypal large copyright proceedings of the generative AI manufacture is underway successful London, pitting Getty Images against artificial quality institution Stability AI.