AI Image Generator Midjourney Sued by Disney, Universal Over Copyright Infringement

Two major Hollywood studios, Disney and Universal Pictures, are suing Midjourney over what they are calling unauthorized use of their intellectual property to train its artificial intelligence large language model.

The copyright infringement lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles, accused Midjourney of producing replicas of the studios’ copyright-protected characters by using its image generation tool.

Examples of characters and images involved included Shrek and Minions from Universal, as well as various characters from the universes of Disney’s The Lion King, Aladdin, Frozen, Marvel, Star Wars, The Simpsons, Toy Story, Cars, and How to Train Your Dragon.

“Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing,” the two companies said in their lawsuit. “Midjourney’s conduct misappropriates Disney’s and Universal’s intellectual property and threatens to upend the bedrock incentives of U.S. copyright law that drive American leadership in movies, television, and other creative arts.”

Executives from Disney and Universal parent NBCUniversal provided separate statements to Axios.

“Our world-class IP is built on decades of financial investment, creativity, and innovation—investments only made possible by the incentives embodied in copyright law that give creators the exclusive right to profit from their works,” said Horacio Gutierrez, senior executive vice president, chief legal and compliance officer at Disney.

Kim Harris, NBCU’s executive vp and general counsel, added, “We are bringing this action today to protect the hard work of all the artists whose work entertains and inspires us and the significant investment we make in our content. Theft is theft regardless of the technology used, and this action involves blatant infringement of our copyrights.”

Midjourney, based in San Francisco and started in 2021, had a user base of almost 21 million as of September 2024. It launched its AI image generator in February 2022 and accumulated $300 million in revenue last year, nearly $100 million more than it made in 2023.