Infringement on protected works is at the heart of a groundbreaking new lawsuit filed by Disney and NBCUniversal against AI platform Midjourney.

The complaint, submitted Wednesday in Los Angeles Federal District Court, accuses Midjourney of using copyrighted images without authorization to train its image-generating artificial intelligence tools. It marks the first high-profile lawsuit of its kind from major Hollywood studios.

“Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing,” Disney said in its complaint.

https://youtu.be/BEfMRU5knH0?si=wZ54O-2oVDHgIo7F

Midjourney: Infringement on Protected Works

The lawsuit claims Midjourney gained unauthorized access to visual assets, including characters from Star Wars, Minions, Spider-Man, and Buzz Lightyear, and used them to train its AI image generation models. According to the studios, Midjourney’s software can create near-replicas of these iconic characters, violating intellectual property laws.

Midjourney has not responded publicly to the latest allegations. However, the company is already fighting a similar case in California brought by artists who claim their work was used without consent to train the company’s generative AI.

A Broader Legal Trend in AI Copyright Disputes

This lawsuit reflects a growing legal movement aimed at curbing what content creators call unauthorized exploitation of copyrighted materials by AI developers. A central question in these lawsuits: Can generative AI companies use copyrighted data from the internet to train their models without permission?

“Until courts draw a clearer line, companies will continue to argue that this kind of data use qualifies as fair use,” said an attorney familiar with multiple AI litigation cases.

More about Fair Use from the U.S. Copyright Office

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Parallel Cases: Reddit, OpenAI, and Getty

In a separate case, Reddit is suing Anthropic, the developer of the Claude AI model, for scraping data from Reddit forums without consent. Anthropic, backed by Amazon and Google, denies wrongdoing but is also facing a lawsuit from music publishers claiming it used copyrighted lyrics from artists such as Beyoncé and The Rolling Stones.

Meanwhile, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is fending off several lawsuits. Notably, The New York Times alleges the company used its reporting to train AI, and comedian Sarah Silverman claims her books were used without permission.

Read OpenAI’s response to data training lawsuits

Precedent and Implications

Although U.S. courts have not yet settled the issue, the Delaware District Court recently ruled in favor of Thomson Reuters, stating that competitor Ross infringed copyright by training an AI legal assistant on Reuters’ content. The court rejected Ross’s fair use argument.

Review the Ross v. Thomson Reuters case summary

Similarly, Getty Images is battling AI startup Stability in both the U.S. and U.K., arguing that the company used its images to train Stable Diffusion without proper licensing causing infringement on protected works.