Walt Disney Co (NYSE:DIS, ETR:WDP) and NBCUniversal have filed a joint lawsuit against AI image generator Midjourney, accusing the company of using their copyrighted material without permission to train its software and produce unauthorised images of well-known characters.
In a case brought before a federal court in California, the entertainment giants claim that Midjourney’s platform hosts and creates thousands of images that infringe on protected intellectual property.
The studios argue that their characters are the product of decades of creative and financial investment, and that copyright protections are essential to sustaining that model.
Midjourney, founded in 2021, reportedly earned $100 million in revenue last year. The company has not yet issued a response.
AI models such as Midjourney and ChatGPT rely on vast datasets including images, text and video, often scraped from the internet without licences.
The case comes amid wider concerns in the UK and elsewhere over AI’s impact on copyright and creative rights.