Midjourney, another leading artificial intelligence company, is now the target of a copyright infringement lawsuit. Disney and Universal, two major players in the media landscape, are the plaintiffs in this blockbuster entertainment industry suit. The plaintiff’s complaint argues that Midjourney used the intellectual property of both companies without permission. It claims that Midjourney trained its AI models without obtaining the appropriate permissions or licenses. This lawsuit is a reminder that litigation is only one of many battlegrounds over the use of copyrighted content for the training and improvement of generative AI.
The complaint notes a number of examples where Midjourney is said to have included Disney’s and Universal’s intellectual properties in its training datasets. In response, the plaintiffs are asking for accountability for what they characterize as illegal exploitation of their creative works. Until this case, the state of play had been that AI companies have acted with relative impunity. Further, they are facing tremendous criticism for copyright infringement and the ethics of their training practices.
Background on AI Copyright Issues
In recent years, most prominent AI companies had to fight lawsuits. Recently they have been targeted for infringing on copyrighted content. OpenAI is currently being sued by the Associated Press, Getty Images, and multiple other media outlets, authors, and creators. They claim that the company’s use of their works to train AI models was done without consent. This development is part of a larger trend, reflecting an increasing awareness and concern about the intersection of technology and intellectual-property rights.
Another AI company, Suno, has publicly bragged about scraping content from the Internet to obtain data for their models. It justified its actions by saying it pulled its data from what was available in the public domain on the internet. This admission has fueled ongoing conversations about the legality and ethics of using proprietary content to develop AI in large-scale.
As this new AI technology continues to develop, companies such as Midjourney will have to thread the needle of legal, ethical and other implications. Disney’s and Universal’s lawsuit illustrates the pitfalls when creative industries meet cutting-edge technology.
Implications for the AI Industry
There’s no question that the copyright infringement lawsuit against Midjourney could have dramatic implications for the AI industry as a whole. If the court were to side with Disney and Universal, it would be a major blow to the legal defenses of AI companies. They may need to rethink their training procedures in response. This may signal the government’s intention to create narrower rules about when copyrighted materials can be utilized for AI training.
Furthermore, the result of this case could dictate how other companies deal with these kinds of issues. And increasingly, nonprofits are defending their interests from the unlawful misuse of their intellectual properties. For this reason, AI developers could be on the hook for increased pressure to use transparent practices and obtain licenses for all copyrighted material used in their workflow.
These recent developments make a strong case for the need for clear, national legal frameworks. So we need big, bright lines prohibiting bad AI training practices. The outcome of lawsuits like the one against Midjourney may ultimately shape the future of AI technologies and their relationship with traditional creative industries.
