Midjourney Calls on Hollywood Studios to Reveal Their AI Practices

In an ongoing legal dispute with three Hollywood studios, AI startup Midjourney is urging these studios to reveal their own use of AI technology.

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

Midjourney argues that training its AI models using images of copyrighted characters qualifies as fair use.

The primary contention in the case revolves around the documentation that the studios must present during the discovery process. A judge has determined that the studios are obligated to provide information about their generative AI usage, but only when it results in “consumer-facing” videos and images.

In its latest filing, Midjourney seeks to contest this limitation, claiming it “unfairly” allows the studios to “cherry-pick only the documents they consider beneficial to their market harm assertions, while denying Midjourney access to documents that could strengthen its defenses.”

Midjourney also maintains that the “documents [the studios] are withholding would specifically indicate whether, behind the scenes, they are engaging in the same practices they are prosecuting Midjourney for.”

For example, the startup argues that if the studios are developing image-generating AI models “for internal purposes in storyboarding or creating ideas for film or TV content, that evidence would demonstrate that it is standard practice, even among the studios, to download and train AI on unlicensed copyrighted material.”

Moreover, Midjourney’s filing stresses that the studios should disclose all prompts used in Midjourney along with the resulting outputs, not just those that produced the allegedly infringing images.

The lead attorney for the studios, David Singer, previously remarked that Midjourney’s demand for this documentation constitutes a “fishing expedition.”

He also asserted that the studios “are not trying to halt AI technology or shut down Midjourney’s operations,” but simply “want Midjourney to stop copying their films and TV shows and to refrain from distributing, publicly displaying, publicly performing, and creating derivative works featuring copies of [their] iconic characters without permission.”