The Walt Disney Company and NBCUniversal filed a suit on June 11th against AI company Midjourney over alleged copyright infringement, Axios reports.

Disney and Universal

The lawsuit alleges that Midjourney’s image-generating service “functions as a virtual vending machine” that creates “endless unauthorized copies” of copyrighted works.

Disney and Universal filed the suit in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, marking the first major legal action that studios have taken against an AI company. The studios are suing Midjourney for alleged direct and secondary copyright infringement by using the studios’ intellectual property to train their language model and by displaying AI-generated images of their copyrighted characters.

Magic Kingdom

Both companies claim that they tried to speak with Midjourney about the problem before going the legal route, but Midjourney did not take the problem seriously, despite other generative AI platforms that allegedly did heed the warning.

A copy of the court documents indicates that Midjourney “continued to release new versions of its Image Service, which, according to Midjourney’s founder and CEO, have even higher quality infringing images.”

Universal Orlando

The lawsuit alleges, “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.”

Walt Disney Company Headquarters ©LA Times

“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,” said Horacio Gutierrez, senior executive vice president, chief legal and compliance officer of The Walt Disney Company.

Kim Harris, executive vice president and general counsel of NBCUniversal, said, “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.”

©NBC

Disney and Universal are seeking unspecified maximum statutory damages, an accounting of Midjourney’s proceeds from the alleged infringement, and injunctive relief.

While Congress has considered new laws regulating AI, the Motion Picture Association believes that existing copyright law is sufficient, according to Deadline.

The suit continues to accuse Midjourney of being “the quintessential copyright-free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” and that the “infringement is calculated and willful.” It’s also interesting to note that in 2024, for the first time ever, Disney began paying lobbyists to lobby for AI-related bills in Congress.

©Disney

This is a developing situation, and we’ll be on the lookout for additional updates. In the meantime, make sure you stay tuned to DFB for the latest Disney news and more.

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