On Wednesday, Disney and NBCUniversal filed a lawsuit against AI image-synthesis company Midjourney, accusing the company of copyright infringement for allowing users to create images of characters like Darth Vader and Shrek, reports The Hollywood Reporter. The complaint, filed in US District Court in Los Angeles, marks the first major legal action by Hollywood studios against a generative AI company.
Midjourney is a subscription image-synthesis service and community that allows its users to submit written descriptions called prompts to an AI model that generates new images based on them. It has been well-known for years that AI image-synthesis models such as the ones that power Midjourney have been trained on copyrighted artworks without rights holder permission.
The lawsuit describes San Francisco-based Midjourney as a "bottomless pit of plagiarism" that enables users to generate what the studios call "AI slop"—personalized images of copyrighted characters. Disney Enterprises, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century, Universal City Studios Productions, and DreamWorks Animation joined forces in the legal filing.