midjourney hits different
The majority of the 41 copyright lawsuits against AI companies do not involve alleged infringement in the outputs of AI generators. A handful do, including the New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI, which included in Exhibit J to the complaint 100 examples of alleged regurgitated articles generated from ChatGPT. But OpenAI said that the investigator for the New York Times was only able to generate those regurgitations using (extraordinary) methods that violated their terms of use.
What’s different about the lawsuit just filed by Disney and Universal City Studios is that the allegations, including numerous examples of images of their copyrighted characters generated on Midjourney, is that Midjourney’s ability to generate these characters looks like a feature, not a bug, of the generator.
Indeed, I tested it out myself today, just to verify one of the allegations in the complaint (Disney and Universal: please don’t sue me). Sure enough, Midjourney seemlessly generated the following images of the characters Hiccup and Toothless. And it did so in very high–indeed, impressive–quality.
Example I generated on Midjourney
Midjourney awakened the sleeping giant.
This lawsuit is likely to lead to a Hollywood ending of a different kind–not a happy one for Midjourney
midjourney allegedly failed to implement greater guardrails to stop infringing outputs–and Ignored the studios’ request
Reading the over 100 page Complaint of Disney and Universal, one cannot help but wonder, What is Midjourney thinking?
The Complaint chronicles not only numerous examples of allegedly infringing outputs of Midjourney, but also the efforts lawyers for Disney and Universal took, in cease and desist letters (Exhibits C and D), to demand that Midjourney implement greater guardrails to stop infringing outputs:
Identify the specific steps Midjourney has taken (if any) to (a) prevent the unauthorized copying and distribution of Universal’s copyrighted works, and (b) mitigate the threat of further harm caused by the unauthorized exploitation of Universal’s works, such as technological measures, filters, and other copyright protection measures that can be implemented by AI services to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution of our works. Universal Letter (Ex. D) on May 30, 2025.
According to the Complaint, Midjourney never responded. “Midjourney never responded to Universal’s letter at all. Despite being put on notice of its infringement of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works, Midjourney has not implemented any reasonable technical measures or otherwise attempted to cease its infringement or purge its Explore page of the numerous images infringing Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works.”
Shocking.
What is Midjourney thinking?
Midjourney awakened the sleeping giant. This lawsuit is likely to lead to a Hollywood ending of a different kind–not a happy one for Midjourney.
Excerpt from Complaint
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