Midjourney Calls on Hollywood Studios to Reveal Their AI Practices

In the midst of a legal dispute with three Hollywood studios, the AI startup Midjourney is urging these studios to reveal their own use of AI technologies.

Last year, Disney and Universal initiated a lawsuit against Midjourney, accusing it of copyright infringement, claiming that the startup’s image-generating models can produce images of characters like Bart Simpson and Darth Vader, which belong to the studios. Warner Bros. joined the lawsuit a few months later.

Midjourney argues that training its AI models using copyrighted character images falls under fair use.

The pivotal matter in this case is the evidence the studios must provide during the discovery phase. A judge has ruled that the studios must disclose information about their generative AI use, but only if it pertains to “consumer-facing” videos and images.

In its latest filing, Midjourney seeks to dispute this restriction, claiming it “unjustly” allows the studios to “selectively release only the documents they consider beneficial for their market damage claims, while preventing Midjourney from obtaining materials that could support its defenses.”

Midjourney further alleges that the “documents [the studios] are withholding could indicate whether they are engaging in the same practices for which they are suing Midjourney.”

For example, the startup posits that if the studios are developing image-generating AI models “for internal uses such as storyboarding or concept development for films or TV shows, that evidence would demonstrate that it is standard practice, even within the studios, to download and train AI on unlicensed copyrighted material.”

Moreover, Midjourney’s filing highlights that studios should submit all prompts used with Midjourney, along with the resultant outputs, instead of just those that produced the allegedly infringing images.

David Singer, the lead attorney representing the studios, has previously characterized Midjourney’s request for this documentation as a “fishing expedition.”

He has also remarked that the studios “are not looking to hinder AI technology or shut down Midjourney’s operations,” but rather “desire for Midjourney to stop reproducing their films and TV shows and to refrain from distributing, publicly displaying, publicly performing, and developing derivative works featuring copies of [their] iconic characters without approval.”