> Darth Vader is one of the characters the two studios allege Midjourney uses to generate images. Getty Images
For years now, authors and artists have been filing small- and medium-sized lawsuits to assert their rights against generative artificial intelligences, tools often accused of being illegally trained, exploiting copyrighted content. On Wednesday, June 11, however, Disney and Universal also took the field: two Hollywood giants who joined forces to sue Midjourney, a well-known image generator that tends to reproduce with surprising fidelity the visual style on which its model is based.
The [court papers](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.973999/gov.uscourts.cacd.973999.1.0_3.pdf) - 110 pages dense with examples - detail how the AI in question “distorts the fundamental incentives of U.S. copyright law.” “Midjourney is the quintessential copyright scrounger, a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” the documents state, where they speak of “calculated and intentional infringement,” with content that all too obviously reproduces original works. Horacio Gutierrez, executive vice president and chief legal officer of Disney, spoke openly of “piracy.”
The two majors do not claim to be opposed to artificial intelligence - far from it - but they strongly object to the fact that the generative AI outputs in question explicitly recall brands such as Star Wars, Shrek and Marvel. A discontent that the prosecution says was already communicated to Midjourney through legal channels, but was allegedly ignored: the company simply bought time while continuing to release new versions of its models.
The legal action involves seven corporate entities within Disney and Universal and seeks an immediate injunction against Midjourney so as to prevent it from continuing to distribute images related to the brands mentioned in the documents. At the same time, damages are being sought, but the amount has not yet been specified. Claims that are closely reminiscent of the lawsuits seen in recent years, but with one major difference: this time it is not a class action brought by writers, illustrators or news outlets with relatively limited resources, but rather by two titans with notoriously aggressive and extremely well-prepared legal teams.
In that sense, this is an unprecedented case that could significantly affect the future of generative AI by establishing a relevant legal precedent. It is suspected that many of the models on the market today have been trained by employing materials that have been stolen or otherwise used without the consent of the rights holders, a practice that is defended by invoking the principle of fair use, arguing that the generated content is “transformative” enough not to constitute direct plagiarism. A viewpoint that is also defended with lobbying strategies aimed at asking the White House that the right to cannibalize copyrighted material be “[preserved](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/creators-ai-copyright-battle-1236192627/).”
Disney and Universal do not go so far as to demand the removal of their works from the training archives-a demand that would have disruptive consequences for the entire industry-but rather demand that Midjourney immediately stop generating images traceable to their products. And that it do so before launching its new video generation system.
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