In a dramatic legal clash that pits Hollywood’s biggest creative powerhouses against Silicon Valley innovation, Disney and Universal have filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence firm Midjourney, accusing it of systematically looting their most iconic intellectual properties to fuel its explosive growth.
Filed Wednesday in California federal court, the lawsuit brands San Francisco-based Midjourney as a “copyright free-rider” that is cashing in on decades of beloved characters—from Darth Vader and Spider-Man to Shrek and the Minions—without permission, payment, or even a pretense of collaboration.
“Midjourney seeks to reap the rewards of plaintiffs’ creative investment,” the suit states, calling its AI art tool a “virtual vending machine” for pirated content.
Hollywood vs. AI: The IP War Begins
The complaint, brought by Disney Enterprises, Universal City Studios Productions, and subsidiaries including Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, and DreamWorks Animation, contends that Midjourney has trained its generative image model on protected content—then used that very content to market its product, generate revenue, and build a subscriber base of nearly 21 million as of late 2024.
At the heart of the dispute is Midjourney’s AI platform, which allows users to generate hyper-detailed images based on text prompts. The plaintiffs argue that it doesn’t just draw inspiration—it reproduces protected works outright.
“A simple request for ‘Darth Vader riding a dragon’ yields an image that unmistakably depicts Disney’s Darth Vader,” the suit alleges.
