Warner Bros. Discovery Sues Midjourney Over Unauthorized AI Character Use

Warner Bros. Discovery has initiated legal action against the AI startup Midjourney, alleging unauthorized use of its intellectual property. The lawsuit claims that Midjourney's technology allows users to generate images and videos of iconic characters such as Wonder Woman and Superman without proper authorization. This move by Warner Bros. Discovery is part of a broader effort by Hollywood studios to safeguard their intellectual property from AI-generated content.

Midjourney, based in San Francisco, offers a subscription-based AI image generation service that enables users to create images and short videos using AI technology. In the lawsuit, Warner Bros. Discovery submitted images allegedly generated by Midjourney's technology, including depictions like "Superman looking at a phone" and "Batman posing with the Star Wars character R2-D2." Warner Bros. Discovery asserts that Midjourney does not have the right to use or sell derivative works of its characters. Users have already shared these AI-generated character images on platforms like Reddit, Discord, and Instagram, and Warner Bros. Discovery alleges that Midjourney has used these contents for commercial promotion. Consequently, Warner Bros. Discovery is seeking up to 150,000 dollars in damages for each instance of infringement.

In the complaint filed with the Los Angeles Federal Court, Warner Bros. Discovery stated, "Despite being aware of the extensive scale of Midjourney's copyright infringement, the company has deliberately and profit-drivenly decided not to provide any protection to the copyright holders." Midjourney has not yet responded to these allegations.

This lawsuit mirrors a similar action taken in June by Disney and Comcast's Universal Studios against Midjourney. Like competitors such as ChatGPT and Stability AI, Midjourney trains its AI models by scraping vast amounts of image data from the internet. While these AI companies claim that such data scraping is legal under the "fair use" doctrine of U.S. copyright law, the practice has sparked significant backlash from creative industry enterprises, leading to multiple lawsuits. The outcome of this legal battle could set a precedent for how AI-generated content is regulated, potentially impacting the entire entertainment industry.