Hollywood studios have filed a lawsuit against the developer of generative artificial intelligence Midjourney, claiming that the company’s tool creates «countless» copies of characters, including Darth Vader from Star Wars, Elsa from Frozen and the Minions from Despicable Me.
Hollywood studios have filed a lawsuit against the developer of generative artificial intelligence Midjourney, claiming that the company’s tool creates «countless» copies of characters, including Darth Vader from Star Wars, Elsa from Frozen and the Minions from Despicable Me.
In a lawsuit filed in federal district court in Los Angeles, the studios cited examples of images created by Midjourney that included Disney characters such as Yoda from Star Wars and Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and Iron Man from Marvel, the BBC reported.
Disney’s chief legal officer, Horacio Gutierrez, said the company was «optimistic» about how artificial intelligence «can be used responsibly as a tool to advance human creativity».
«But piracy is piracy, and the fact that it’s being done by an artificial intelligence company doesn’t make it any less illegal», — he said.
In their complaint, Disney and Universal said that Midjourney made $300 million last year alone and plans to «soon launch a video service.» In their 110-page copyright infringement lawsuit, the companies’ lawyers don’t hold back. They claim that Midjourney’s technology is «a virtual machine that generates endless unauthorized copies of Disney and Universal’s copyrighted works.» Disney and Universal call Midjourney «a typical copyright infringer and a bottomless pit of plagiarism».
Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh said: «Many of the images that Midjourney creates appear to be simply copies of copyrighted characters, which may be in new locations or against new backgrounds. They do not appear to be transformed in any creative or imaginative way,» said Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh.
He added that copyright law recognizes that a work can be based on other works as long as it adds something new.
AI has a mixed reception in Hollywood. Just two years ago, actors and writers shut down the entertainment industry’s heartland with strikes demanding protection from the new technology. But now, artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in television, movies, and video games.
This technology has been used to rejuvenate actors like Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford. Two Oscar-nominated films used AI from Ukrainian startup Respeecher to change voices: Emilia Perez and The Brutalist.
Previously, Respeecher CEO Oleksandr Serdyuk told how the Ukrainian startup managed to establish cooperation with the world’s largest film production companies.
