Top Hollywood studios, Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery, are in a court battle with Midjourney over copyright infringement.
The studios say the AI image tool generates pictures of their protected characters, including IPs like Darth Vader, Bart Simpson, Superman, and Batman, without permission.
Midjourney’s defense rests on fair use, which allows limited use of copyrighted material without needing permission from the rights holder, under certain conditions. The company argues that training its models on publicly available images, even copyrighted ones, is legal.
The lawsuit has now shifted focus to discovery, the stage where each side must hand over evidence. Midjourney wants the studios to disclose their own internal AI usage. A magistrate judge ruled that the studios only need to share information on AI use tied to consumer-facing content.
Midjourney has appealed the ruling, arguing that it allows the studios to present evidence of harm caused by AI while preventing Midjourney from using evidence that could support its defense. This includes evidence that the studios use AI internally for storyboarding and generating ideas.
Midjourney is also asking the studios to disclose every prompt they have entered into its platform, not just the prompts linked to the images at the center of the case.
The studios’ lawyers have called this request a fishing expedition and maintained that their goal is to stop unauthorized copying and distribution of their characters.
This case follows a pattern seen earlier this year with Seedance 2.0, ByteDance’s AI video generation tool. Disney, Paramount Skydance, and the Motion Picture Association sent cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance after the tool produced realistic videos of copyrighted characters.
Disney accused ByteDance of training the tool on its characters without authorization.
The concern in both cases is the same. Once AI can generate protected characters on demand, the exclusivity that makes those characters valuable starts to erode.
Actors have secured their own protections in the meantime. SAG-AFTRA ratified a new four-year contract in June 2026 that limits the use of AI performers. Under the agreement, producers can only use an AI performer in place of a human actor if it brings significant additional value.
The outcome of the Midjourney case will likely shape how copyright law treats AI training data going forward.
