The two media giants allege that Midjourney sells a service that generates endless, unauthorised copies of copyrighted works they own. This includes Academy Award-winning Shrek (Disney and Universal’s distinction not ours), Minions from Despicable Me, Kung Fu Panda, and Star Wars.
The lawsuit showcases numerous examples of Midjourney’s tech generating images of properties owned by the two firms. The prompts used to generate these images are as simple as “Lightning McQueen racing, cartoon” which spits out a direct copy of the greatest racer to ever exist. However, even when a prompt is vague like “superhero fight scene” Disney’s copyrighted works show up.
One of the more interesting arguments in the lawsuit is that Midjourney’s use of copyright-protected material in its training data is attractive to users. The pair argue that users on the likes of Reddit talk up Midjourney because of its ability to closely mimic the breadth of IP owned by the likes of Disney and Universal, as well as others.
The companies also point out that despite having guardrails in place to prevent the generation of certain types of content, there are no guardrails for copyright-protected material. The lawsuit also warns that Midjourney’s forthcoming video service will likely have the same problems for copyright owners.
Disney and Universal want Midjourney to cough up for the costs of this lawsuit, damages it has incurred as well as any profit it has made from selling access to its platform. The pair also want Midjourney to stop letting folks create images or videos of Homer Simpson palling around with Darth Vader.
Of all the lawsuits we’ve seen involving AI platforms of late, this is a reasonable pursuit. That said, as always we believe that the likely outcome here is a settlement agreement.
“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” Horacio Gutierrez, senior executive vice president and chief legal and compliance officer of The Walt Disney Company told CNBC via a statement. “But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it’s done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing.”
Whether Disney and Universal receive any monetary compensation from Midjourney in terms of profits, remains to be seen. Earlier this week we reported that OpenAI achieved revenue. However, given the company’s spend on compute power and the cost of its staffing complement, it’s unclear how much, if any of that revenue, was profit.
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