Disney and Universal are teaming up to sue AI company Midjourney in a lawsuit that calls its AI generation tools a "bottomless pit of plagiarism," as reported by Reuters.
Midjourney's tools pull from existing material to gain information used to create new (sometimes strikingly similar) images and other media. Disney and Universal are targeting Midjourney's apparently indiscriminate data collection, alleging that it utilizes copyrighted material in ways that are not protected by current law.
"We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity, but piracy is piracy, and the fact that it's done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing," says Horacio Gutierrez, executive vice president and chief legal officer for Disney said in a statement.
NBCUniversal executive vice president and general counsel Kim Harris adds that the company is suing Midjourney to "protect the hard work of all the artists whose work entertains and inspires us and the significant investment we make in our content."
Disney and Universal are citing numerous examples of characters and concepts owned by the two studios being recreated by Midjourney's generation tools, from Bart Simpson, to Iron Man, Buzz Lightyear, Shrek, and even the dragons from How to Train Your Dragon.
Midjourney founder David Holtz previously told Forbes that the company's AI generation tools are trained on a "big scrape of the internet."
The studios are seeking an injunction to prevent Midjourney's tools from gathering data without protection of already copyrighted works, and an unspecified sum of monetary damages.
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