Warner Bros. has become the latest Hollywood studio to sue one of the biggest artificial intelligence companies in the world, Midjourney, over allowing its subscribers to recreate copyrighted characters using its technology.
Warner’s lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in California and obtained by TheWrap, comes nearly three months after Disney and Universal sued Midjourney on copyright infringement grounds. Like that lawsuit, Warner’s lawsuit contains dozens of pages comparing official artwork and images of characters like Bugs Bunny, Batman, Scooby-Doo and Rick & Morty to AI-generated images of those characters created on Midjourney.
“Midjourney thinks it is above the law,” the lawsuit reads. “The
Service lets subscribers pick iconic Warner Bros. Discovery copyrighted characters and then reproduces, publicly displays and performs and makes available for download infringing images and videos … with every imaginable scene featuring those characters. Without any consent or authorization by Warner Bros. Discovery, Midjourney brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property as if it were its own.”
The lawsuit is the latest in the multipronged battle between AI and media companies over the future of the nascent technology and IP law. Copyrighted images and writing, including millions of pirated books, movie and TV scripts and academic material have been used to train the AI models of top companies like Apple and Anthropic, leading to multiple lawsuits from companies and creators.
Warner Bros. argues that Midjourney’s ability to generate on-model images of copyrighted characters is a key draw of its subscription service, which is offered at four tiers ranging from $10 to $120 per month. The studio also argues that those images, which can be downloaded and printed onto shirts, posters and other items, are an unlawful competitor to Warner’s own consumer products featuring their IP.
Warner is seeking $150,000 in damages per infringed work, which given the millions of images on Midjourney could spiral into financially crippling costs for the AI company. Disney and Universal identified 199 infringing images in its lawsuit, which would equate to nearly $30 million in damages.
The defense regularly given by AI companies is that their technology’s use of IP is covered by “fair use” protections that are intended to protect the use of copyrighted material for the sake of criticism, comment, teaching, research or parody.
“Copyright law does not confer absolute control over the use of copyrighted works,” Midjourney’s lawyers argued in a response to Disney and Universal’s lawsuit. “The limited monopoly granted by copyright must give way to fair use, which safeguards countervailing public interests in the free flow of ideas and information.”
Midjourney also accused the studios of a double standard, saying that “many dozens” of subscribers to their service have listed emails linked to Disney and Universal.
“Plaintiffs cannot have it both ways, seeking to profit — through their use of Midjourney and other generative AI tools — from industry-standard AI training practices on the one hand, while on the other hand accusing Midjourney of wrongdoing for the same,” the filing states.
In a statement, the Motion Picture Association expressed its support for the lawsuits: “We remain concerned that copyright infringement, left unchecked, threatens the entire American motion picture industry, which supports over 2 million jobs in all 50 states and drives countless economic, social, and cultural benefits.”
