Warner Bros. has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Midjourney, accusing it of copyright infringement for allowing users to create AI-generated images and videos featuring copyrighted characters such as Superman and Bugs Bunny.
This legal action follows similar lawsuits by Disney and Universal, who jointly sued Midjourney in June in Los Angeles federal court. Midjourney, headquartered in San Francisco, did not respond to requests for comment regarding the case.
According to Warner Bros., Midjourney trained its AI system using “illegal copies” of the studio’s works and encourages users to generate images or videos of well-known characters like Batman, Wonder Woman, Scooby-Doo, or the Powerpuff Girls in various scenarios. The complaint claims that even generic prompts such as requesting a “classic comic book superhero battle” can result in high-quality images depicting DC Studios characters including Superman, Batman, and Flash.
“Midjourney thinks it is above the law” and “could easily stop its theft and exploitation” of intellectual property just as it sets restrictions on violence or nudity, Warner Bros. said in its filing.
The lawsuit further alleges that Midjourney’s practices cause confusion among consumers about what is lawful use by misleading subscribers into believing that the generation of these images is authorized by Warner Bros. Discovery. The company states it may seek up to $150,000 in damages for each infringed work.
In previous court filings related to the Disney and Universal case, Midjourney denied any copyright infringement. The company argued that training its AI tool on billions of publicly available images was necessary “in order to learn visual concepts” and how they relate to language.
“Training a generative AI model to understand concepts by extracting statistical information embedded in copyrighted works is a quintessentially transformative fair use – a determination resoundingly supported by courts that have considered the issue,” according to Midjourney’s response. The company cited recent court rulings involving lawsuits from published authors against Anthropic and Meta Platforms (Facebook’s parent).
Midjourney also maintained that customers are responsible for following its terms of use, which prohibit violations of intellectual property rights.
In a 2022 interview with The Associated Press, David Holz, CEO of Midjourney, described his service as similar to a search engine collecting diverse images from across the internet. He compared current copyright concerns about generative AI technology with historical shifts in how laws have adapted alongside human creativity: “Can a person look at somebody else’s picture and learn from it and make a similar picture?” Holz said. “Obviously, it’s allowed for people and if it wasn’t, then it would destroy the whole professional art industry, probably the nonprofessional industry too. To the extent that AIs are learning like people, it’s sort of the same thing and if the images come out differently then it seems like it’s fine.”
The Motion Picture Association released a statement Friday supporting Warner Bros.’s legal action against Midjourney.
