In an unusual combination of joint action. NBC Universal and Walt Disney Company have collaborated to initiate a suit against the company, Midjourney. This company creates images from prompts with artificial intelligence. It’s been charged with infringement of rights over characters and intellectual property. Disney and NBC Universal filed their complaint on June 11, 2025, in the US District Court for the Central District of California, a significant development in the continuing discussions about AI and copyright.
Claims of Copyright Violation
The complaints allege that Midjourney’s AI model was trained on the copyright materials of the copyright owners Disney and NBCUniversal without authorization from the copyright owners. Studios have argued that Midjourney is allowing platform users to produce images of recognizable characters like Elsa from Frozen, Minions from Despicable Me, Darth Vader from Star Wars, etc. These images are claimed to be “blatant copies” of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works that would keep studios from investing in those works.
The complaint also alleges that Midjourney functions as a “virtual vending machine” for pirated copies of copyrighted characters. Users of Midjourney can create high-quality, downloadable images from simple text prompts. Studios argue that this is piracy and that the service is creating copyrighted material without permission, eliminating potential licensing revenue that studios would legally receive.
Legal and Industry Impacts
This lawsuit is the first major legal challenge against an AI company by Hollywood studios for copyright violations. The lawsuit presents a lawful challenge to the AI industry’s use of the “fair use” doctrine to train models of copyrighted content and raises larger questions regarding the ethical and legal limits of AI within the creative space. The outcome of this case could have dire implications both on the future of artificial intelligence and on how to ethically use copyrighted content.
The studios are attempting to maximize statutory damages, a full accounting of Midjourney’s profits from incisive infringement, including injunctive relief from future breaches. The studios indicate that AI-themed innovations should not undermine the copyright protections that support the creative industry, stating “piracy is piracy”, regardless of AI’s involvement.
Broader Context
This case has to be viewed in the wider context of a rising swell of legal challenges to AI companies. Just a few weeks after the Donaldson lawsuit was initiated, a collective of visual artists took action by filing a class action lawsuit and seeking a preliminary injunction against DeviantArt and Stability AI in January 2023. Midjourney, alleging that they overly reproduced visual works without the authors’ permission to train AI models that generate new images using their artwork as examples. A U.S. District Court denied the AI companies’ motion to dismiss for copyright claims, which allowed this case to proceed. This outcome could indicate the growing skepticism of judges on the idea of “fair use” for AI and may show the growing tension of AI development with copyright law.
As AI technologies and applications continue to develop, the results of these lawsuits may influence how copyrighted works become acceptable for use in AI training and AI generators. The entertainment industry and AI companies will be watching and paying attention to how this case develops and will affect new rules around AI and copyright.
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