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The Walt Disney Co. and NBCUniversal sued AI company Midjourney on Wednesday, alleging that its image-generating service “functions as a virtual vending machine” that generates “endless unauthorized copies” of copyrighted works.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, is the first major legal action that studios have taken against an AI company. Axios first reported on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit states, “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. 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 and NBCU are seeking unspecified maximum statutory damages, an accounting of Midjourney’s proceeds from the alleged infringement, and injunctive relief.
As an example, the lawsuit states that if a Midjourney subscriber “submits a simple text prompt requesting an image of the character Darth Vader in a particular setting or doing a particular action, Midjourney obliges by generating and displaying a high quality, downloadable image featuring Disney’s copyrighted Darth Vader character.” The same is true of NBCU’s Minions character. The lawsuit features the images, as well as a number of other examples.
Representatives for Midjourney did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Read Disney and NBCUniversal’s AI lawsuit.
The lawsuit also delves into the use of copyrighted material to train AI models, a practice that is the source of fierce debate between major AI firms and content companies. The lawsuit noted that Midjourney has been teasing a new video service, “meaning that Midjourney is very likely already infringing Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works.”
As Congress has weighed new laws to regulate AI, the official position of the Motion Picture Association has been that existing copyright law is sufficient to address a new front in the piracy wars. The MPA has emphasized the need for flexibility, including leaving up to the court’s to decide whether the use of copyrighted content in training models is a “fair use.”
The New York Times and book authors, among others, have sued AI companies over the use of copyrighted material. But the studios suggest that Midjourney’s use of copyrighted works was more obvious.
“This case is not a ‘close call’ under well-settled copyright law,” the lawsuit states, adding that Midjourney “sells subscriptions to consumers so that they can view and download copies of Plaintiffs’ valuable copyrighted characters. That is textbook copyright infringement.”
The studios claim that Midjourney could implement protection measures to prevent its image service from generating infringing images, but it has not done so. The studios said that before the legal action they asked Midjourney to take such action, but it instead has “continued to release new versions of its Image Service, which, according to Midjourney’s founder and CEO, have even higher quality infringing images.”
Horacio Gutierrez, senior executive vice president and chief legal and compliance officer for Disney, said in a statement, “Our world-class IP is built on decades of financial investment, creativity and innovation—investments only made possible by the incentives embodied in copyright law that give creators the exclusive right to profit from their works. 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. But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it’s done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing.”
Kim Harris, executive vice president and general counsel of NBCU, said, “Creativity is the cornerstone of our business. 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. Theft is theft regardless of the technology used, and this action involves blatant infringement of our copyrights.”
The studios are represented by David Singer, Julie Shepard and Lauren Greene of Jenner & Block.
