Warner Bros. and DC Comics, along with other parties, have filed a lawsuit against Midjourney, accusing the AI firm of acting as if it's beyond legal jurisdiction.
In a significant development, Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AI image and video company Midjourney. The lawsuit alleges that Midjourney allowed users to create images and video clips featuring copyrighted characters such as Batman, Scooby Doo, and Bugs Bunny, without permission.
This is not the first time copyright infringement claims have been made against Midjourney. Disney and Universal previously sued the AI program over similar allegations. The lawsuit filed by Warner Bros. Discovery is further evidence that copyright is one of the most contentious legal issues in the age of AI.
The spokesperson for Warner Bros. Discovery stated that Midjourney is "blatantly and purposefully infringing copyrighted works," and the lawsuit was filed to protect their content, partners, and investments. Disney and Universal, in their filing, referred to the AI program as "a bottomless pit of plagiarism" and "textbook copyright infringement."
The lawsuit covers Warner Bros. Entertainment and its subsidiaries, including DC Comics, The Cartoon Network, and Hanna-Barbera Productions. The lawsuit also alleges that Midjourney updated its terms of service to prohibit redteaming, a safety process tech companies use.
Midjourney, one of the most popular AI image generators, allows anyone to create AI images and video clips with simple text prompts. In the first few days of releasing a video model, Midjourney stopped users from animating scenes with characters, but later lifted the restrictions. However, the lawsuit suggests that the AI firm knew it was infringing on copyrights, as Midjourney recently dropped the video generation model.
The lawsuit is not the only ongoing case between publishers, creators, and AI companies. Ziff Davis, the parent company of the website mentioned in the article, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems. On the other hand, AI-makers Anthropic and Meta recently scored two victories, with courts claiming that training their models on authors' books constituted fair use.
As concerns exist at every stage of AI content creation, including whether copyrighted materials are used to train AI models and whether those models can create content that meets the legal definition of infringement, this lawsuit highlights the complexities and uncertainties surrounding the use of AI in copyrighted content. Midjourney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
