Disney and Universal recently initiated a copyright lawsuit against the artificial intelligence image generator, Midjourney, marking a significant legal move from Hollywood’s elite regarding AI technology.
Filed in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, the lawsuit accuses Midjourney of unlawfully using content from two Hollywood studios to create and distribute an “endless” number of unauthorized copies of popular characters like Darth Vader from Star Wars and the Minions from the Despicable Me franchise.
The complaint characterizes Midjourney as a “typical copyright freerider” who embodies a “bottomless hole in plagiarism.” It asserts that copyright infringement remains infringement regardless of whether the content is generated by AI or another technique.
Moreover, the studios allege that the San Francisco-based AI firm has disregarded demands to cease its infringement of copyrighted materials and to implement technical measures to prevent further image generation.
Midjourney has yet to respond to requests for comment.
In a 2022 interview with The Associated Press, CEO David Holz likened his image generation service to “a kind of search engine” that pulls from various images across the internet. He also suggested that copyright issues surrounding technology are similar to past adaptations of laws surrounding human creativity.
“Can someone look at another person’s photo, learn from it, and create something similar?” Holz questioned. “Clearly, this is acceptable for people, and if it weren’t, it could undermine not only the professional art industry but possibly the non-professional one too. If AI learns in ways akin to humans, it’s fundamentally the same, and the images appear different.”
While leading AI developers often keep their data sources private, they contend that using publicly available online text, images, and other media to train AI systems falls under the doctrine of “fair use” according to American copyright law.
This suit adds to a growing collection of legal actions that have been filed in San Francisco and New York against developers of AI platforms like OpenAI, Humanity, and others.
In the meantime, a major copyright trial involving the AI industry is currently taking place in London, with Getty Images going against Stability AI, another AI company.
