June 12, 2025 – In a significant legal move, entertainment giants Disney and Universal have jointly filed a lawsuit against Midjourney, a generative AI platform, for allegedly utilizing their copyrighted content without permission to train its image generation and editing models, as reported by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday local time.
The two media conglomerates submitted their complaint to the United States District Court for the Central District of California. They claim that Midjourney has persisted in infringing upon their intellectual property rights, despite previous demands to cease such activities. The lawsuit includes numerous images generated by Midjourney that depict well – known copyrighted characters such as Homer Simpson and Darth Vader.
Disney and Universal are seeking several remedies from the court. They want financial compensation, a trial by jury, and an injunction to prevent Midjourney from any further copyright infringements.
Meanwhile, technology companies like OpenAI have been pushing for legal safeguards that would allow them to use publicly available works, even those under copyright protection, as training materials without having to obtain prior consent from creators or pay royalties. The Wall Street Journal also highlighted that while some film and television studios have started to experiment on a small scale with generative AI technology, its application remains rather limited at present.
