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As part of an ongoing legal dispute with three Hollywood studios, AI startup Midjourney is seeking to compel those studios to reveal how they use AI themselves.<\/p>\n
Disney and Universal sued Midjourney for alleged copyright infringement<\/a> last year, noting that the startup\u2019s image-generation models could create images of characters, such as Bart Simpson and Darth Vader, who are owned by the studios. A few months later, Warner Bros. sued Midjourney<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n The startup argues that training its AI models on images of copyrighted characters is permitted under fair use.\u00a0<\/p>\n The current dispute revolves around the documentation the studios will need to produce during the discovery process. A judge previously ruled that the studios would indeed have to provide information about their generative AI usage \u2013 but only when it led to \u201cconsumer-facing\u201d videos and images.<\/p>\n In its latest filing<\/a>, Midjourney seeks to overturn that limitation, arguing that it \u201cunfairly\u201d allows the studios \u201cto cherry-pick only those documents they believe support their market harm claims while depriving Midjourney of documents that would support its defenses.\u201d<\/p>\n Midjourney goes on to claim that the \u201cdocuments [the studios] are withholding are precisely those that would reveal whether, behind closed doors, they are doing exactly what they are suing Midjourney for doing.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, the startup says that if the studios are developing image-generating AI models\u00a0 \u201cfor internal use in storyboarding or ideating content for film or TV, that evidence would equally demonstrate that it is an industry custom, even among the studios themselves, to download and train AI on unlicensed copyrighted content.\u201d<\/p>\n In the filing, the startup also argues that the studios should reveal all the prompts they used in Midjourney, as well as the resulting outputs, not just the prompts that produced the allegedly infringing images.<\/p>\n The studios\u2019 lead attorney David Singer previously claimed Midjourney was seeking this documentation<\/a> as part of a \u201cfishing expedition.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He also said the studios \u201cdo not seek to stop AI technology or even shut down Midjourney\u2019s business,\u201d but rather \u201csimply want Midjourney to stop copying their movies and TV shows and to stop distributing, publicly displaying, publicly performing, and creating derivative works that include copies of [their] famous characters without authorization.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n