Let them fight: Disney and NBCUniversal are taking on Midjourney

Three words: Let them fight.

Almost immediately after AI image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney entered the wider public consciousness in 2021/2022, a single, unified meme emerged. People were concerned that millions of artists’ works had been scraped without permission and used in generators’ datasets. But, since 99.999% of independent makers don’t have the cash to challenge AI companies in court, it seemed like there was no avenue to financial recompense or a court ruling that could keep no-consent scrapes from happening again.

People knew, though, that there is one copyright-obsessed company out there with lots of lawyers and absolutely zero tolerance for anyone else making money off its IPs.

Disney.

As the meme went, the Mouse would be the one to bring down AI. Disney just needed incentive to join the fight.

Now, it’s happening.

This week, Disney and NBCUniversal filed a joint suit against Midjourney, alleging copyright infringement.

“By helping itself to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, and then distributing images (and soon videos) that blatantly incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters–without investing a penny in their creation–Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” the duo said in their suit. “Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing. Midjourney’s conduct misappropriates Disney’s and Universal’s intellectual property and threatens to upend the bedrock incentives of U.S. copyright law that drive American leadership in movies, television, and other creative arts.”

Among the images Disney/NBCU cited in their suit are generated shots of various Star Wars characters, Elsa from Frozen, Shrek, Minions, and a semi-spicy shirtless shot of Wolverine with Deadpool, which is objectively very funny because if the suit succeeds, we are looking at a future where Poolverine yaoi saved the world from AI slop.

The suit does not mince words. On top of the above statement, it accuses Midjourney of having a “bootlegging business model” that is in “defiance of U.S. copyright law,” and argues Midjourney’s existence is “a broader threat to the American motion picture industry which has created millions of jobs and contributed more than $260 billion to the nation’s economy.”

Disney and NBCU are, of course, seeking financial compensation for damages (amount undisclosed), as well as “preliminary and/or permanent injunctive relief enjoining and restraining Midjourney” from using Disney/NBCU material in its datasets or generating images related to their IPs.

They are the first major Hollywood stakeholders to file suit against AI companies, so if they win their case, it will set a new, protective precedent for studios–and potentially for the littler guys, too.

Midjourney has so far declined to comment.

Now, to be clear, despite all the “the Mouse will save us” memes, Disney isn’t some AI-battling Avenger here. Yes, it’s taking on Midjourney, but it’s not doing that because it’s unhappy about the general existence of gen AI. In fact, Disney has embraced gen AI across numerous areas of its business, impacting a significant amount of those “millions of jobs” it mentioned in its suit. So while this court case may set precedent for creatives to protect their IPs, it won’t protect them from being replaced by robots to save a buck in Disney’s production pipeline.