The Walt Disney Company and Comcast’s NBC Universal have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Midjourney, the developer of generative artificial intelligence technology.
In a 110-page complaint filed in federal court this week, the two entertainment giants allege Midjourney “blatantly incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters” in its models that trained its generative AI products.
“Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” the lawsuit says.
The filing included numerous examples of Midjourney creating replicas of Universal and Disney characters, including Darth Vader, Shrek, Homer Simpson and Spider-Man.
Disney says it sent Midjourney a cease-and-desist notice last year, and the company responded with a receipt of the notice, but did not otherwise act on it. NBC Universal sent a similar notice to Midjourney last year, but did not receive an acknowledgement.
The lawsuit filed against Midjourney is the latest involving a major publisher of information and entertainment accusing a tech company focused on AI of stealing proprietary content and data to train its computer models without a license, permission or compensation.
The New York Times was one of the first outlets to report on the lawsuit. The newspaper has sued AI-focused firms, including ChatGPT developer OpenAI, on allegations of scraping information from websites and training AI models without a license or permission.
Midjourney has not commented on the lawsuit filed by Disney and NBC Universal. OpenAI has characterized its own lawsuit as “meritless” and vowed to fight it in court.
