Midjourney is Trying to Force Hollywood to Reveal How it Uses AI

The AI image generator Midjourney is determined to force Hollywood to reveal how the movie industry uses AI — as the company accuses the studios of hypocrisy.

Midjourney is currently being sued by Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. over allegations of widespread copyright infringement since the image generator can output AI pictures of recognizable characters such as Yoda from Star Wars.

Midjourney doesn’t deny the allegations, arguing that training AI on copyrighted material qualifies as fair use. Furthermore, Midjourney says that Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. all use similar generative AI tools internally.

While a judge has already ruled that the plaintiffs must provide information about their generative AI use, it only relates to “consumer-facing” tools. Midjourney says that behind closed doors, “they are doing exactly what they are suing Midjourney for doing.”

In its most recent court filing, Midjourney says the prior judge’s ruling allows studios “to cherry-pick only those documents they believe support their market harm claims while depriving Midjourney of documents that would support its defenses.”

Midjourney is asking a federal judge to overturn the earlier decision, arguing that Hollywood studios must reveal how much AI is being used in their productions.

“If Plaintiffs are doing the very thing they seek to punish, that evidence goes to the heart of Midjourney’s fair use and unclean hands defenses,” says Midjourney attorney Bobby Ghajar, per Engadget.

“If Plaintiffs are developing image-generating AI models — trained on unlicensed, third-party copyrighted data — for internal use in storyboarding or ideating content for film or TV, that evidence would equally demonstrate that it is an industry custom, even among the studios themselves, to download and train AI on unlicensed copyrighted content.”

Variety reports that the plaintiffs’ attorney previously argued that Midjourney is on a “fishing expedition” in a bid to distract from the company’s misdeeds.

“Plaintiffs simply want Midjourney to stop copying their movies and TV shows and to stop distributing, publicly displaying, publicly performing, and creating derivative works that include copies of Plaintiffs’ famous characters without authorization,” says David Singer. “The same rights any copyright holder would assert against any infringer, AI-powered or otherwise.”

PetaPixel has previously written about Hollywood’s reluctance to share how it uses unpopular generative AI technology.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.