Disney and Universal suing Midjourney for copyright infringement

Disney and Universal have sued AI company Midjourney over alleged misuse of copyrighted material. The Hollywood companies are accusing Midjourney of using images from the two companies to train its AI models.

Midjourney offers its users the option to produce images with artificial intelligence, including images barely distinguishable from well-known figures from Disney and Universal, such as Shrek, Darth Vader, Buzz Lightyear, Homer Simpson, Minions, and Spider-Man.

According to court documents, Midjourney has set up a lucrative commercial service by making countless, unauthorized copies of Disney’s and Universal’s copyrighted works. In addition, the company sells subscriptions to consumers so that they can view and download copies and derivatives of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted characters.

“Midjourney’s large-scale infringement is systematic, ongoing, and willful, and Plaintiffs have been, and continue to be, substantially and irreparably harmed by it,” Disney and Universal said in the lawsuit.

“Midjourney is 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. 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,” the companies continue.

Disney and Universal have reached out to Midjourney to stop infringing their copyrighted works and to adopt technological measures to prevent generating infringing material in the future. However, Midjourney didn’t respond to the plaintiffs’ demands. That’s why the entertainment companies have sued Midjourney.

This is the first time major Hollywood companies have gone to court to sue AI companies. The Motion Picture Association, the film industry’s lobby group, said in a statement on Wednesday that strong copyright protection is the backbone of the movie industry.

“A balanced approach to AI that both protects intellectual property and embraces responsible, human-centered innovation is critical for maintaining America’s global leadership in creative industries,” Charles Rivkin, CEO of the Motion Picture Association, stated.

This isn’t the first time an AI company has been sued for using copyrighted material without permission. A group of newspapers sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2024, accusing them of using millions of their articles without permission to train the large language model behind its popular chatbot.