Misha Solodovnikov

When the world’s best golfers descend on Royal Birkdale in Southport, England, for the 154th Open Championship, they arrive at golf’s oldest major — the tournament that has defined the sport since 1860. Played on the windswept links where the game forged its traditions, The Open has always celebrated history. But this year, it also marks the arrival of something entirely new.

In a moment that was both inevitable and seismic, Disney and Universal filed a high-profile copyright infringement lawsuit against Midjourney, a leading generative AI company specializing in image and video synthesis. The studios claim that Midjourney trained its generative models on copyrighted characters, including Yoda, Bart Simpson, Iron Man, Shrek, and others, without authorization, and facilitated public generation of derivative works through its platform.

Artificial Intelligence isn’t pushing IP boundaries anymore. It’s smashing them. The film and music industries are bracing for impact. Studios are nervous. What once took armies of artists, writers, and directors can now be done in minutes by machines. And the machines are getting really good. Will systems like Vertex AI Media Studio, Llama, Sora by OpenAI, and Runway Gen-2 replace American giants like Disney or legendary French studio like EuropaCorp? In the United States, every individual owns the right to their own image as a form of intellectual property. AI has complicated the very definition of what one’s image is.

The evolution of content distribution has been both a boon and a bane for the entertainment industry. From physical formats like CDs and DVDs to digital streaming over satellite, fiber-optic networks, 5G, and Wi-Fi, the rapid technological advancements have brought unmatched convenience to viewers. The shift feels seamless: connect a smart TV to Wi-Fi, and the days of waiting for the cable guy are over. For television show producers, however, the transition has come at a steep cost.