Well, it had to happen eventually.

AI services are being sued left and right by authors, artists, and musicians.  And now Hollywood has entered the fray.

Disney, 20th Century Studios, Universal City Studios Productions, and DreamWorks Animation have jointly filed a lawsuit against Midjourney (a leading generative AI company) accusing it of rampant copyright infringement.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, portrays Midjourney as a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.”

Darth Vader at the Beach? Shrek Doing Yoga?

It’s no shock to anyone reading this that gen AI prompts can create high-resolution, downloadable images featuring iconic characters like Darth Vader, Wall-E, Stormtroopers, Minions, Shrek, and others—all without permission or licensing.  The complaint even provides some side-by-side comparisons:

And the damage being done to Disney is…well, exactly zero, actually.  It’s not like Disney is running a competing gen AI service and losing out on revenue because people are using Midjourney instead of it.  For the average Internet user, if you want to put some funny Chewbacca art on a birthday meme for your uncle, it’s Midjourney (or Leonardo).

If there was ever a definition of fan art, this is it.

Now, Disney might be right to charge some kind of licensing fee, or offer a competing service.  But slapping MJ down is not going to endear them to anyone.

Midjourney’s “Explore” Page Called Out

The complaint argues this shows Midjourney knows its platform is regularly producing unauthorized derivative works.  According to the plaintiffs, Midjourney’s “Explore” page serves as a form of advertising that showcases infringing content and encourages further misuse of copyrighted material.

Furthermore, the studios claim that Midjourney has the technical ability to filter or block prompts that would generate infringing images, but chooses not to activate those protections.  This is actually untrue.  Admittedly, I moved off MJ a while back but I’d be surprised if it didn’t have similar filters to Leonardo, which will certainly disallow some kinds of art.

Hollywood Ruins Everything

Until now, most major media companies (with exceptions – The New York Times is battling OpenAI in court) have opted for licensing deals rather than litigation. But Hollywood always wants to be a jerk about things.

Midjourney Lawsuit PDF

Do you think AI platforms should be liable for the images their users create?  Should copyright law adapt—or should AI companies be forced to play by the old rules? Let us know your take in the comments below.

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.