Disney and Universal Sue AI company Midjourney for copyright infringement

On Wednesday, Disney and Universal have sued a prominent start-up of artificial intelligence for copyright infringement on Wednesday, so that Hollywood brought late in the increasingly legal battle for generative AI

The film companies approached Midjourney, an AI image generator with millions of registered users. The 110 -page lawsuit argues that Midjourney “has helped itself with countless” protected by copyright to train his software, with which people can make images (and soon videos) who can clearly record and copy “Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters.”

“Midjourney is the typical free-rider of copyright and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” said the companies in the lawsuit, which was filed in the American court in Los Angeles.

Midjourney could not be reached immediately for comment.

AI startups such as Midjourney, which was founded in 2022, train their software with data that has been scraped from the internet and elsewhere, often without compensating without makers. The practice has resulted in lawsuits of authors, artists, record labels and news organizations, among other things. (The New York Times has sued OpenAi and his partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement. OpenAi and Microsoft have denied those claims and say that their actions fall under “reasonable use”.)

But Disney and Universal are the first large Hollywood studios that submit a copyright infringement.

Creative employees in the entertainment capital are increasingly frustrated about Studio -Stilte about this. “They did not protest against the theft of this copyright protected material by the AI ​​companies, and it is a capitulation on the side to still be on the sidelines,” Meredith Stiehm, president of the Writers Guild or America West, told the Los Angeles Times in February.

The Midjourney right indicates that Disney and Universal, the two most powerful traditional entertainment companies, have been waiting for their time. While he takes a detailed goal on Midjourney for infringement of prominent characters such as Darth Vader, the Minions, the “Frozen” princesses, Shrek and Homer Simpson, the lawsuit reads as a shot for AI companies in general.

“We are bullish about the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used in a responsible way as a tool to promote human creativity,” said Horacio Gutierrez, the general counsel for Disney, in an e -mail. “But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it is done by an AI company makes it no less infringing.”

Kim Harris, general counsel for NBCUIVERSAL, who includes the Universal Movie Studio, said in a separate e -mail: “We are bringing this action today to protect the hard work of all the artists whose work entertains and inspires us and the important investments we make in our content.”

This is the latest news. Come back for updates.