As part of an ongoing legal dispute with three Hollywood studios, AI startup Midjourney is trying to force the studios to reveal how they use AI.
Last year, Disney and Universal sued Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging that Midjourney’s image-generating models could create images of the studio’s own characters, including Bart Simpson and Darth Vader. A few months later, Warner Bros. also sued Midjourney.
The company claims that it is allowed under fair use to train its AI models using images of copyrighted characters.
The current controversy revolves around the documents studios are required to produce during the discovery process. A judge previously ruled that studios must actually provide information about how they use generated AI, but only if it leads to “consumer-grade” videos or images.
In its latest filing, Midjourney seeks to overturn that restriction, arguing that it “unreasonably” allows the studio to “select documents that appear to support its market harm claims and deprive Midjourney of documents that support its defense.”
Midjourney goes on to claim that “the documents[the studios]are withholding reveal whether they are doing the very things they are suing Midjourney for behind closed doors.”
For example, if a studio is “developing an image-generating AI model for internal use in ideating or storyboarding content for film or television, the evidence would similarly demonstrate that downloading unlicensed copyrighted content to train the AI is an industry practice, even among the studio itself,” the company said.
In its filing, the startup also claims that the studio should disclose all prompts and resulting outputs it used on Midjourney, not just the prompt that generated the allegedly infringing images.
The studio’s lead attorney, David Singer, previously claimed that Midjourney had sought the documents as part of a “fishing expedition.”
He also said that the studio is “not trying to shut down AI technology or shut down Midjourney’s operations,” but rather, “we just want Midjourney to stop copying movies and TV shows and stop distributing, publicly displaying, publicly performing, or creating derivative works, including unauthorized copies of famous characters.”
If you buy through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect editorial independence.
