Disney and Universal sue AI image generator Midjourney over copyright
In June 2025, Disney and Universal sued Midjourney in a US court, accusing the AI image generator of copyright infringement over its characters.
This summary was written by AI to complete the context; it is not based on a current source.
On 11 June 2025, Walt Disney Co. and NBCUniversal's Universal Pictures filed a lawsuit against Midjourney, the company behind a popular AI image generator. The complaint was lodged in a federal court in California.
The studios accused Midjourney of copyright infringement, arguing that its system had been trained on their protected works and could produce images of well-known characters on request. They described the service as a bottomless pit of plagiarism. The case was among the first major legal actions by Hollywood studios against a generative AI company.
The lawsuit mattered because it showed how wary the major studios were of generative AI, even as the technology spread through creative industries. It raised questions about whether training AI models on copyrighted material is lawful and who is responsible when a tool reproduces protected characters. Midjourney had not yet been tested in court on these claims at the time of filing, and the outcome was expected to influence how studios, visual effects companies and AI developers work together.
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