Disney And NBCUniversal Sue AI Company Midjourney For Copyright Infringement

The Walt Disney Co. and NBCUniversal sued the AI company Midjourney on Wednesday, alleging that its image generating service “functions as a virtual vending machine” that generates “endless unauthorized copies” of copyrighted works.

In the suit, the studios offered examples of Midjourney animations that include Disney characters, such as Yoda wielding a lightsaber, Bart Simpson riding a skateboard, Marvel's Iron Man soaring above the clouds and Pixar's Buzz Lightyear taking flight.

Disney and Universal asked the court for a preliminary injunction, to prevent Midjourney from copying their works, or offering its image- or video-generation service without protections against infringement. The studios also seek unspecified damages.

In a 2022 interview with Forbes, Midjourney CEO Holz said he built the company's database by performing "a big scrape of the Internet."

“Our world-class IP is built on decades of financial investment, creativity and innovation—investments only made possible by the incentives embodied in copyright law that give creators the exclusive right to profit from their works," said Horacio Gutierrez, senior executive vice president and chief legal and compliance officer for Disney in a statement. "We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity. But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it’s done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing.” 

Kim Harris, executive vice president and general counsel of NBCU, said, “Creativity is the cornerstone of our business. We are bringing this action today to protect the hard work of all the artists whose work entertains and inspires us and the significant investment we make in our content.  Theft is theft regardless of the technology used, and this action involves blatant infringement of our copyrights.”