Disney and Universal on Wednesday morning sued Midjourney, a prominent artificial intelligence company, for copyright infringement in what is the first major legal battle between Hollywood studios and an AI company.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, says Midjourney “blatantly” ripped off Disney and Universal characters, including Homer Simpson, The Minions and Elsa from “Frozen,” by allowing users to create near-exact matches with its image-generating tool. This happened “countless” times, both companies claim in the lawsuit.
Midjourney “is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” Disney and Universal’s filing added.
Reps for San Francisco-based Midjourney did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Both studios said they approached Midjourney about their copyright concerns before filing the lawsuit. But Midjourney, the filing noted, “ignored” them and is strictly “focused on its own bottom line.”
Midjourney offers users a text-t0-image tool, allowing them to create AI-generated pictures based on typing a few words. The company was founded in 2021 and had more than $300 million in sales last year via paid subscriptions, the Disney and Universal lawsuit claimed on Wednesday.
“We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity,” Disney legal Executive Vice President Horacio Gutierrez told Axios. “But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it’s done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing.”
The lawsuit comes after several Hollywood actors and creators, including Aubrey Plaza, Ben Stiller and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, sent a letter to the Trump Administration earlier this year, saying they were concerned AI companies were violating the rights of copyright owners.
While the Disney-Universal lawsuit could lead to other legal battles between entertainment firms and AI companies, several media outlets have already sued AI companies over what they claim is illegal use of their content.
The New York Times, most notably, is suing OpenAI for using its content to train ChatGPT without the paper’s consent. Other outlets, like The New York Daily News, have also sued OpenAI for using their articles without permission.
On the other end, several media companies, including News Corp. and Vox Media, have made content-sharing deals with OpenAI, and Reddit — in a lawsuit last week against Anthropic — noted it has a partnership with OpenAI as well.
