Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD.US) has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence (AI) startup Midjourney, alleging intellectual property infringement. The complaint states that Midjourney has allowed users to generate images and video content featuring characters such as Wonder Woman and Superman without proper authorization.
San Francisco-based Midjourney operates a subscription-based AI image generation service that enables users to create images and short videos using artificial intelligence technology. In the lawsuit, Warner Bros. Discovery has submitted allegedly Midjourney-generated images as evidence, including scenes of "Superman looking at a phone" and "Batman posing alongside Star Wars character R2-D2."
Warner Bros. Discovery contends that Midjourney has no right to use or sell derivative works featuring its character likenesses. Users have already posted these AI-generated character images on social media platforms including Reddit, Discord, and Instagram, with Warner Bros. Discovery noting that Midjourney has also used this content for commercial promotion purposes.
Based on these allegations, Warner Bros. Discovery is seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringement case. In the complaint filed with the federal court in Los Angeles, Warner Bros. Discovery stated: "Despite Midjourney's knowledge that its piracy and copyright infringement has reached a shocking scale, it has made a deliberate and profit-driven decision to provide no protection whatsoever to copyright holders."
Midjourney has not yet responded to the allegations. This lawsuit mirrors similar legal action filed against Midjourney in June by Disney (DIS.US) and Universal Studios, owned by Comcast (CMCSA.US).
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 such data scraping is legal under the "fair use" doctrine in U.S. copyright law, the practice has generated significant backlash from numerous creative industry companies and has resulted in multiple related lawsuits.