Disney and Universal Become Latest to Sue Midjourney Over Generative AI Service

Examples of Midjourney’s recent infringement of the plaintiffs’ copyrights, according to the complaint.

Disney Enterprises, Inc. et. al. and Universal City Studios Productions LLLP, et. al. filed a complaint today with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against the AI image generator, Midjourney. The suit accuses Midjourney of being a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.”

According to the plaintiffs, Midjourney could have stopped the infringement and copying of their copyrighted works at any time—either by controlling the data used to train, by controlling the prompts users input, or via technological protection measures—but chose not to and failed to respond to letters informing them of the infringement prior to the lawsuit. In fact, said the complaint, the infringement of the plaintiffs’ works is a “feature” of Midjourney’s service, which “functions as a virtual vending machine” for unauthorized copies. Furthermore, Midjourney continued to release new and improved versions of its service even after receiving notice of the infringing content from the plaintiffs.

The 110-page complaint included dozens of examples in which prompts result in images of Disney and Universal’s copyrighted characters, including Darth Vader, the Minions, the Simpsons, Iron Man and more.

This type of infringement has allowed Midjourney to become profitable, said the plaintiffs. The company had nearly 21 million users as of September 2024, “surpassed $200 million in revenue in 2023, and reportedly made $300 million in revenue in 2024” despite its “relatively short existence.”

 Image generated in response to the prompt, “Princess Elsa singing in front of an ice castle, Frozen animated movie,” according tot he complaint. 

The lawsuit points to several statements made by Midjourney CEO David Holz attesting to the fact that the company’s business model relies on scraping the internet. In a 2022 interview, Holz said the company “pulls off all the data it can, all the text it can, all the images it can” to collect training data and also has stated publicly that they did not seek copyright holders’ consent.

Holz also said in that interview that he would be open to an opt out model so that copyright owners could control whether their content is used for training, but the company doesn’t “have a process for that yet.” According to Holz at the time, the artists they had heard from were not intimidated by Midjourney and “actually, the number one request we get right now from artists is they want it to be better at stealing their styles, so they can use it as part of their art flow even better. And that’s been surprising to me.”

The suit is seeking damages and Midjourney’s profits in “an amount according to proof” or  statutory damages up to $150,000 per infringed work for willful infringement, as well as preliminary and/or permanent injunctive relief.

Lat year, in another suit brought by a number of artists, Midjourney largely lost its motion to dismiss the copyright infringement claims against it.