By Gavin Boyle
Warner Bros. Discovery is suing AI image generation company Midjourney for breaking copyright by returning images of copyrighted characters when prompted to do so and for training itself on copyrighted material.
“The heart of what we do is develop stories and characters to entertain our audiences, bringing to life the vision and passion of our creative partners,” a Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson said after the lawsuit was filed. “Midjourney is blatantly and purposefully infringing copyrighted works, and we filed this suit to protect our content, our partners, and our investments.”
The lawsuit claims that Midjourney is in violation of copyright because its product can generate Warner Bros. Discovery-owned IPs like Superman, Bugs Bunny or Scooby-Doo for Midjourney’s profit. Furthermore, the studio claims that because of this, Midjourney clearly trained its models on Warner Bros. Discovery material without its permission.
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Related: Hollywood Studio Warns Big Tech Not to Steal Movies to Train AI
Midjourney is already facing legal pressure from Disney and Universal as well, as the companies filed a similar joint lawsuit earlier this year.
“For more than 100 years, Disney and Universal have delighted audiences around the world by investing in and fostering American creative innovation and producing some of the greatest motion pictures and fictional characters of all time,” said the lawsuit filed by the companies.
“Midjourney, however, seeks to reap the rewards of Plaintiffs’ creative investment by selling an artificial intelligence (‘AI’) image-generating service (‘Image Service’) that functions as a virtual vending machine, generating endless unauthorized copies of Disney’s and Universal’s copyrighted works,” the suit continued.
Midjourney has since responded to the filing from Disney and Universal, arguing it is protected by fair use laws, while also exposing Disney and Universal for trying to have it both ways — benefitting from AI while criticizing Midjourney for profiting off of the same technology.
“Copyright law does not confer absolute control over the use of copyrighted works. The limited monopoly granted by copyright must give way to fair use, which safeguards countervailing public interests in the free flow of ideas and information,” Midjourney said in response to Disney and Universal’s lawsuit.
“Plaintiffs cannot have it both ways, seeking to profit — through their use of Midjourney and other generative AI tools — from industry-standard AI training practices on the one hand, while on the other hand accusing Midjourney of wrongdoing for the same,” the response continued.
This legal battle may define the future course of AI as art and image generation proves to be one of the most popular use cases of the technology so far. When ChatGPT released its updated image generation tool in March, it added over one million users in an hour as the public was enthusiastic to give the technology a try. Meanwhile, Netflix has updated its policies to dictate how AI can be used on the shows and movies added to the platform.
The plans for integrating AI into the future of the entertainment industry, however, may come to a screeching halt if the lawsuit against Midjourney is successful and the company is found to be in violation of copyright law. Only time will tell how things play out, and until then, ChatGPT and Midjourney will continue to generation millions of images every day.
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