The first official shots have been fired in Hollywood’s war with generative AI, with Disney and NBCUniversal at the forefront. On Tuesday, the two entertainment giants filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against the AI start-up Midjourney after the companies alleged Midjourney‘s website “displays hundreds, if not thousands, of images generated by its Image Service at the request of its subscribers that infringe Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works.” Both claimed that they had previously reached out to Midjourney to stop the company from stealing its copyrighted characters for its own use, only for the company to continue releasing “new versions of its Image Service, which, according to Midjourney’s founder and CEO, have even higher-quality infringing images.” The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in L.A.
In their suit, Disney and NBCU cite dozens of images featuring a wide range of characters, from Deadpool and Wolverine to Spider-Man, Darth Vader, Elsa, Olaf, The Simpsons, Buzz Lightyear, Shrek, the Minions, and many more, all of which were conceived by the company’s titular AI image generator using a single prompt and the push of a button. More importantly, both parties point out how Midjourney has essentially enriched itself through copyright infringement. Since its founding by David Holz in 2021 and the launch of the image generator in 2022, the start-up has seen millions of dollars in profits, including over $200 million in revenue from paid subscriptions in 2023, and reportedly around $300 million last year. It has also attracted over 21 million users as of September 2024, thanks to its generator. Their comments largely echo the concerns of artists who’ve seen intellectual property harvested by the AI to generate images of similar styles without consent.
“By helping itself to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, and then distributing images (and soon videos) that blatantly incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters — without investing a penny in their creation — Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” Disney and NBCU‘s lawsuit reads. “Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing. Midjourney’s conduct misappropriates Disney’s and Universal’s intellectual property and threatens to upend the bedrock incentives of U.S. copyright law that drive American leadership in movies, television, and other creative arts.” They also outline a wider concern for the film industry should AI continue to advance and continue to jeopardize the jobs and creative properties under Hollywood’s biggest players. “Midjourney’s bootlegging business model and defiance of U.S copyright law are not only an attack on Disney, Universal, and the hard-working creative community that brings the magic of movies to life, but are also a broader threat to the American motion picture industry which has created millions of jobs and contributed more than $260 billion to the nation’s economy. This case is not a ‘close call’ under well-settled copyright law.”
Disney and NCBU’s Lawsuit Could Have Wide-Reaching Consequences in Hollywood
A big sticking point for Disney and NBCU is that images aren’t just generated by Midjourney, but also featured directly on its Explore page. It’s seen as a blatant acknowledgement and showcase of the copyright infringement at the heart of the suit. As recompense for using and cleaning their work and knowingly generating new content from the copyrighted material, the companies are pursuing unspecified monetary damages and “preliminary and/or permanent injunctive relief” preventing Midjourney from continuing to distribute and generate images with their characters. Whatever the outcome of the case is, it represents a new frontier in the war between entertainment and tech and could have far-reaching ramifications for Hollywood as it tries to combat companies leaning on personalized entertainment as a potential business model. Midjourney, for its part, has not commented yet, though Holz and other AI executives have made the argument that pulling copyrighted material for their models is protected under the “fair use” doctrine.
So far, AI companies have been booming with Wall Street investing big in the space. The San Francisco-based Midjourney, which has 11 full-time staff on duty and helped blaze a trail for image generators, is just one of several notable start-ups profiting from investors believing in the industry’s future in entertainment and other sectors. Hollywood itself hasn’t been entirely unafraid of the technology either, despite the worries of creatives. Marvel Studios, for instance, has employed AI in the past to create the images in the opening credits of Secret Invasion. Provisions protecting writers, actors, and others against AI were also at the heart of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
This does, however, send a message that blatantly scraping Disney and NBCU‘s properties won’t be tolerated, even if, as Disney’s chief legal officer Horacio Guttierez says, they are “bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity.” NBCU‘s executive vice president, Kim Harris, meanwhile, has assured that the goal of the lawsuit is also protecting the work of their artists, in addition to their property. “We are bringing this action today to protect the hard work of all the artists whose work entertains and inspires us and the significant investment we make in our content,” she added. “Theft is theft regardless of the technology used, and this action involves blatant infringement of our copyrights.”
Stay tuned here at Collider for more as this lawsuit unfolds and Hollywood takes a new step in its battle with AI. You can read a copy of the full lawsuit from Disney and NBCU here, courtesy of Variety.
via Collider