Walt Disney and Universal Pictures, a subsidiary of Comcast, filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Los Angeles on June 12th, accusing the AI image generator Midjourney of unauthorized use of its classic characters, such as Darth Vader from Star Wars, Elsa from Frozen, and Minions from Despicable Me. Oracio Gutierrez, Disney’s chief legal officer, said that although the company is optimistic about the prospects of AI technology, using copyrighted content without permission is still an infringement. Universal Pictures also emphasized that this move is aimed at protecting the creative investments of artists and companies.
The lawsuit claims that Midjourney uses “Internet scraping” to obtain copyrighted works to train its AI models and generate highly similar animated character images, including Marvel’s Iron Man and Pixar’s Buzz Lightyear. Disney and Universal Pictures have asked the court to issue an injunction to prevent Midjourney from continuing its infringement and seek compensation. Previously, Midjourney has faced class-action lawsuits from artists over similar accusations, but the company argued that it is difficult to trace the specific source of its database construction.
This lawsuit is the latest case of legal dispute between the copyright owner and the AI company. The Motion Picture Association (MPA) supports the actions of Disney and Universal, calling on the AI industry to respect intellectual property rights. With the technological advancement of AI-generated content, copyright issues have increasingly become a focus of the industry. This case may have a profound impact on the future cooperation model between AI and the creative industry.
Related Topic:
