Midjourney is fighting back against the Hollywood studios that are suing it for copyright infringement. According to a report by Variety, the AI company wants Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. to reveal how they train their own AI algorithms.
Why are the studios suing Midjourney?
Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros started legal action against Midjourney last year. The lawsuit alleged that Midjourney’s generative AI model is a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.” It also claimed that Midjourney generates “innumerable” copies of copyrighted characters. The examples given included Darth Vader, Yoda, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and Elsa from “Frozen.”
Horacio Gutierrez, Disney’s chief legal officer, said, “Piracy is piracy.” He added that “the fact that it’s done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing.”
Fair use
Midjourney argues that its AI training falls under the principle of fair use. The company also claimed that the studios used the same practices to train their own AI technology. In June, the judge in the case ruled that Midjourney could only demand information from the studios about their “consumer facing” AI applications.
Now the company is going on the offensive. Its lawyers have filed a motion asking the judge to overturn the previous ruling, which would force Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. to reveal more about their own AI.
Industry custom
Midjourney’s lawyers want the studios to hand over information such as their AI business plans, research reports and training datasets. In documents, the company’s attorney, Bobby Ghajar, argued that “If Plaintiffs are developing image-generating AI models — trained on unlicensed, third-party copyrighted data — for internal use in storyboarding or ideating content for film or TV, that evidence would equally demonstrate that it is an industry custom, even among the studios themselves, to download and train AI on unlicensed copyrighted content.”
Fishing expedition
David Singer, the lead attorney for the studios, responded by claiming that Midjourney is on a “fishing expedition.” His filing stated that the studios “do not seek to stop AI technology or even shut down Midjourney’s business. [They] 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—the same rights any copyright holder would assert against any infringer, AI-powered or otherwise.”
What we think
The ongoing legal action against Midjourney from Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. shows that the rules around AI training are far from settled. When the judge denied Midjourney’s request for information from the studios last month, he said it was irrelevant to the question of whether the company infringed on the studios’ copyrights. That’s true from a strictly legal perspective. Still, it would be awkward for the studios if they were shown to have acted in a similar way.
Whether the judge allows Midjourney’s latest request remains to be seen. What’s clear is that there’s a long way to go before the courts give any definitive rulings on AI training.
