The AI startup Midjourney has been charged by Disney and NBCUniversal with violating copyright. Businesses claim that Midjourney has unlawfully used Homer Simpson, Spider-Man, Disney’s “Frozen” Princess Elsa, and other characters.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California in Los Angeles, and the plaintiffs claim that the company is using its characters—including Spider-Man, Star Wars’ Yoda and Darth Vader, Disney’s Frozen Princess Elsa, the Minions, Homer Simpson, Deadpool, and Wolverine—through an online service that lets users create images.
According to the lawsuit, Disney and Universal have entertained audiences all over the world for more than a century by investing in and promoting American creative innovation while also producing some of the greatest motion movies and fictitious characters in history. Midjourney, on the other hand, aims to profit from Plaintiffs’ creative effort by offering an artificial intelligence (“AI”) image-generation service (“Image Service”) that acts as a virtual vending machine, producing infinite unlawful copies of Disney and Universal’s copyrighted works.
The lawsuit continues, Midjourney exemplifies copyright free-riding and plagiarism by assisting Plaintiffs with their copyrighted works and then disseminating pictures, images, and soon videos that shamelessly incorporate and replicate well-known characters from Disney and Universal Studio without spending any money on their creation. An image or video that violates intellectual property rights is nonetheless illegal regardless of whether it was created using artificial intelligence (AI) or another technology.
The lawsuit claims that last year, the business generated $300 million in revenue. As per the lawsuit, its 21 million members, who paid $10 to $120 a month for subscriptions, were able to “view and download copies and derivatives of Plaintiffs’ valuable copyrighted characters.” They referred to it as “textbook copyright infringement.”
The lawsuit claims that as of September 2024, the corporation had about 21 million users. Last year, it reportedly gained $300 million from its image service, which it started in 2022.
Disney and NBCU said that they requested that the company cease exploiting their material, but the company has continued to use it and has upgraded its Image Service.
Senior executive Vice President and Chief Legal and Compliance Officer Horacio Gutierrez of the Walt Disney Company said in a statement: Their world-class intellectual property is based on decades of financial investment, creativity, and innovation—investments that are only made possible by the incentives embodied in copyright law, which grants creators the sole right to profit from their creations. They have high hopes for the potential of AI technology and believe it can be used responsibly to enhance human creativity. But piracy is piracy and the fact that it is being carried out by an AI company does not lessen the fact that it is infringement.
NBCUniversal’s general counsel and executive vice president, Kim Harris, also issued a statement.
According to Harris, the foundation of their company is creativity. They are taking this step today to safeguard the labor of all the artists who inspire and amuse them, as well as the substantial financial investment they make in this content. Regardless of the technology, theft is theft, and this activity clearly violates the copyrights.
In addition to “permanent injunctive relief” to stop the usage of the characters, the lawsuit requests undisclosed monetary damages.
