Cease and Ignored: Studios Say Warnings Went Unheeded
The lawsuit chronicles a paper trail of ignored legal warnings. Disney first contacted Midjourney in November 2024, flagging unauthorized uses of characters from The Simpsons, Star Wars, Spider-Man, and more. Universal followed with its own warning in May 2025, citing infringing images from Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and Despicable Me.
Despite those letters, the studios say Midjourney “doubled down”—not only ignoring the requests but teasing a new AI video-generation tool rumored to be trained on the same IPs.
“Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing,” the studios wrote in their complaint.
$300 Million Revenue — and Rising
Midjourney, launched in 2022, has surged to financial heights few startups achieve so quickly. According to the suit, the AI firm raked in $200 million in 2023 and soared past $300 million in 2024, largely driven by paid subscriptions for its image-generation service.
That success, Disney and Universal argue, is directly tied to their own creations—characters, stories, and visuals built on decades of storytelling and billions in investment.
