Midjourney Demands Transparency from Hollywood on AI Integration

AI startup Midjourney is currently embroiled in an ongoing legal dispute with three major Hollywood studios: Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. The studios initiated lawsuits against Midjourney last year, alleging copyright infringement. Their claims stem from Midjourney's image-generation models, which are capable of producing likenesses of copyrighted characters such as Bart Simpson and Darth Vader, characters owned by these studios.

Midjourney's defense hinges on the argument that training its AI models on images of copyrighted characters falls under the doctrine of fair use. The core of the current legal battle, however, has shifted to the scope of documentation the studios must provide during the discovery process. A prior judicial ruling mandated that the studios only disclose information about their generative AI usage if it resulted in “consumer-facing” videos and images.

In its latest legal filing, Midjourney is endeavoring to reverse this specific limitation. The startup contends that this restriction “unfairly” allows the studios to “cherry-pick only those documents they believe support their market harm claims while depriving Midjourney of documents that would support its defenses.” Midjourney further asserts that the “documents [the studios] are withholding are precisely those that would reveal whether, behind closed doors, they are doing exactly what they are suing Midjourney for doing.”

For instance, Midjourney posits that if the studios themselves are developing image-generating AI models “for internal use in storyboarding or ideating content for film or TV,” such evidence would demonstrate an industry custom, even among the studios, of training AI on unlicensed copyrighted content. Beyond internal AI usage, the startup is also demanding that the studios disclose all prompts they have utilized within Midjourney, along with their resulting outputs, not just those prompts that allegedly produced infringing images.

The studios' lead attorney, David Singer, previously characterized Midjourney's pursuit of this extensive documentation as a “fishing expedition.” Singer also clarified the studios' objectives, stating that they “do not seek to stop AI technology or even shut down Midjourney’s business,” but rather “simply want Midjourney to stop copying their movies and TV shows and to stop distributing, publicly displaying, publicly performing, and creating derivative works that include copies of [their] famous characters without authorization.”