It was just a matter of time before the main Hollywood studios started to fight in the artificial intelligence industry for his alleged abuse of intellectual property.
Now it’s turned on.
Last week, Walt Disney Co. and Universal Pictures continued the Ai Midjourney firm in the Los Angeles American District Court, accusing the popular images generator of copying and enjoying flagrantly protected images by franchises such as “Star Wars”, “Minions”, “Cars”, Marvel, “The Simpsons” and “Shrek”.
The complaint has cited many examples, illustrated with dozens of striking photos, Midjourney technology based in San Francisco used to generate practically indistinguishable copies of Dark Vader, Iron Man, Bart, Woody and Elsa, sometimes in frames similar to the scenes of real movies and television emissions.
The trial indicates that Midjourney has used such images to promote its subscription service and encourage the use of its image generator. Companies are looking for an unpertified monetary remuneration, as well as a court order to prevent Midjourney from making a violation, including by using equipment belonging to a studio to form its next video tool.
“Midjourney is the carrier on copyright par excellence and a background tank of plagiarism,” wrote Disney and Universal lawyers in the 110 -page complaint. “Piracy is a hacking, and if a counterfeit image or video is made with AI or another technology makes it no less counterfeit.”
The challenges of this battle are raised, according to studios. The abusive use of the Disney and Universal intellectual property company “threatens to upset the foundation of the American law on copyright law that stimulates American leadership in films, television and other creative arts,” said the court document.
Midjourney did not respond to requests for comments.
AI companies have generally argued that they are protected by the “fair use” doctrine, which allows limited reproduction of equipment without authorization from the copyright holder.
The founder of Midjourney, David Holz, in 2022 said to Forbes That the company did not ask for permission of copyright holders, saying: “There is not really any way to obtain one hundred million images and to know where they come from.”
This battle is long to come.
The artists – including the writers, the animators, the illustrators and the other workers in the entertainment industry – have raised the alarm for years on the threat of AI, not only for their real work but for the work they create. AI models are formed on everything and everything accessible to the public on the Internet, which includes material protected by copyright belonging to studios or artists themselves, they support.
Last year, the Writers Guild of America called on major entertainment companies to bring legal action against giants and technology startups in order to put an end to such a “theft”. But it is the first time that one of the main film studios has carried out an AI company for the violation of copyright. They may not be the last.
The studios follow the example of the New York Times and other publishers, which heard OPENAI and its Microsoft funder on an alleged plagiarism. The main music labels have also brought to court companies on the use of music protected by copyright. Studios are in an awkward position because they weigh the possibility of allowing their content to AI companies or to use technology for their own ends.
Reid Southen, a movie film based in Michigan, whose research on AI was cited at length in the trial, said that he hoped that the Disney and Universal complaint encourages others to adopt a similar position.
“I hope I think other studios are considering what’s going on with Disney and Universal now, and considering:” Hey, what about our properties? “”, Said Southen, who worked on studio films, notably “The Matrix Resurrections”, “The Hunger Games” and “Blue Beetle”. “If Universal and Disney think they have a case strong enough to continue this, I hope that other studios would take note of it and perhaps pursue it too.”
Southen became part of the story in December 2023, after the release of Midjourney V6 began to make waves online. He saw someone use the technology to generate an image of Joaquin Phoenix like Joker, and he started playing with him to see what types of material protected by copyright, he could invite him to scam. He published the results on social networks, which led the IA researcher, Gary Marcus, to reach out.
Marcus and Southen published an article in depth for Spectrum ieee In January 2024, arguing that Midjourney and other well -funded AI companies form their models on the work protected by copyright without their permission or their compensation and spitting images almost identical to studios equipment.
This article illustrated how simple prompts could produce almost exact replicas of famous film and television characters.
The prompts did not necessarily need to ask for a particular character by name.
The researchers were able to coordinate strange images of AI with prompts as basic as “animated toys” (resulting in images of “Toy Story” characters) and “video game plumber” (which revealed versions of Mario of “Super Mario”). According to Marcus and Southen, all it took was the expression “popular film screen” to evoke an image similar to a real frame of “Batman c. Superman: Dawn of Justice “or” The Dark Knight “.
“This shows that they are very clearly trained on hundreds, even thousands, films and YouTube videos and caps and all that, because I was able to find caps and matching screen images, not only from trailers, but to deep films themselves,” Southen said.
The examples of Midjourney were the most flagrant, said Southen, but the company was not the only offender. For example, OPENAI, Dall-E Image Generation Technology was also capable of producing “plagiarized” images of copyright-protected characters without specifically inviting them by name, said Southen, echoing the conclusions of his Spectrum Ieee of Marcus and Marcus article.
OPENAI did not respond to a request for comments. The Disney and Universal trial did not appoint Openai, who is also responsible for the Sora video generator who tries to storm the cinema.
Many chatbots and text tools in the image have railings around intellectual property, but they clearly have limits. Ask Chatgpt to create an image of Kermit the Frog, and she will categorically reject the request. However, for example, I recently was able to ask for an image of a female pig character similar to a muppet, and the result was not different from Miss Piggy, although I would not quite say that it was a copy for one.
Southen argues that it is a sign of a serious defect in the formation of language models – the fact that they have already been fed by data accessible to the public. “Sometimes it doesn’t give you something that is perfect, but it gives you enough for you to know that it knows what it does,” he said. “Like, you know where he pulls.”
In public comments, studio leaders have clearly indicated that they are not against AI as a whole. “We are optimistic about the promise of AI and optimistic technology as to how it can be used in a responsible manner as a tool to pursue human creativity,” said Horacio Gutierrez, Disney Legal Director, in a statement on the trial.
As the expert in the media industry Peter Csathy said it in a recent newsletterThere is a good way and a bad way to do AI.
But even doing it in the right way will be disruptive. The use of AI for storyboarding and pre-visit could save millions of dollars, which results in more job losses in the entertainment industry. Lionsgate and AMC Networks have announced offers to use AI to rationalize operations and processes.
For artists like Southten, it is a disturbing reality. He said he had seen his annual income decrease by half since AI generative technology arrived on the scene.
“You can point things like strikes and other things that are happening, but the story is the same for most of the people I know-that their income since all this came has been radically affected,” he said. “The work that has also been very stable for me for a long time is only nowhere.”
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Number of the week
Streaming has just marked an important step.
The share of the technology of the total use of television has exceeded combined broadcasting and cable television for the first time, according to Nielsen.
Streaming represented 44.8% of the television audience in May 2025, said the data firm, marking a record, while the broadcast succeeded at 20.1% and raised 24.1% for a combined visualization of 44.2%.
Nielsen has warned that the rankings can fluctuate because the diffusion networks always control a huge share of eyeballs, especially when NFL football is broadcast.
Finally …
I caught stellar acts at Blue Note Jazz Festival du Hollywood’s Bowl on Saturday. CRI in the saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and bass player DERRICK HODGE. Here is Benjamin Tiny office concert Performance for NPR.
