With the development of the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, the world is increasingly facing challenges that touch not only on technical or ethical issues, but also on the fundamental principles of legal regulation. The field of intellectual property, which has relied on established principles for decades, is currently undergoing a period of profound transformation. Faced with new forms of creativity created by algorithms, traditional industry players are forced to seek new mechanisms to protect their rights.
Increasingly, these processes go beyond professional discussions and are transferred to the realm of court proceedings. After all, issues that seemed hypothetical or purely academic yesterday are now taking on practical and even strategic significance. The focus is on the balance between technological progress and legal certainty, between innovation and the protection of what is considered the creative heritage of humanity.
Against this backdrop, cases where large corporations that embody an entire cultural era come into conflict with technology developers who are just beginning to form their approaches to interacting with the complex world of copyright are becoming indicative.
Details of the lawsuit against Midjourney
Disney, Universal, and several of their entertainment companies have filed a lawsuit against the popular AI-powered creative service Midjourney, alleging that the company has infringed on their copyrights. This is a big move by powerful players that will undoubtedly create a ripple effect throughout the AI and entertainment industry, extending to what you can create with AI tools.
Midjourney is one of many AI image generators that use generative AI technology to convert text into images. With an account, anyone can use its models to create digital images. Many AI image generators have policies and internal safeguards that prevent people from reproducing brand logos, celebrity appearances, and other types of recognizable and sometimes copyrighted material. Disney and Universal claim that Midjourney did not take these precautions, even after they reached out to express their concerns.
In the lawsuit, the companies wrote that Midjourney’s AI image generation technology and future video “blatantly incorporate and copy well-known Disney and Universal characters” without proper licensing or contributing to their original creation. “Midjourney is the quintessential copyright freeloader and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” the lawsuit states.
The 100+ page lawsuit details how Midjourney allows its users to reproduce characters belonging to various Disney and Universal worlds, such as Marvel and Star Wars. It includes examples of images the companies were able to create featuring some of their iconic characters, including from Shrek, Star Wars, and DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon.
Midjourney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Copyright is one of the key legal and ethical issues in AI, and this is far from the first major lawsuit between entertainment companies and AI companies. A class action lawsuit is ongoing against Stability AI by a group of artists led by Carla Ortiz. Publishers such as The New York Times are also concerned, filing a lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
At the same time, some entertainment companies are gradually exploring ways to integrate AI into their creative workflows. Disney has remained silent on AI, neither endorsing nor partnering with it like its Lionsgate counterpart, but also not publicly ruling out the possibility.
“We are optimistic about the prospects of AI technology and are optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool for human creativity,” Horacio Gutierrez, senior executive vice president and chief legal and compliance officer, said in a statement. “But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it’s done by an AI company doesn’t make it any less wrong.”
“The lawsuit filed by Disney and Universal is important in drawing a line in the sand with AI developers such as Midjourney,” Robert Rosenberg, an intellectual property lawyer and former general counsel for Showtime Networks, 
said in an email. “As explained in the lawsuit, the only way AI platforms can produce images of Yoda, Shrek, or Darth Vader is by training their model by ingesting copyrighted images of those characters. They are not inventing new characters here.”
For now, we will have to wait and see how this case and other lawsuits progress. In the meantime, Midjourney users and other AI users can continue to use these services.
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artificial intelligence / claim / copyright / Disney / intellectual property / Midjourney / Universal
