Warner Bros. sues Midjourney over AI use of Superman, Batman and other iconic characters

Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, DC Comics, Turner Entertainment, Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network, has filed a complaint against AI image generator Midjourney.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court, WBD alleged that Midjourney “brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery's intellectual property as if it were its own.” The company claims Midjourney’s AI was trained using unauthorised copies of its copyrighted works and allows subscribers to select iconic WBD characters to generate infringing images and videos.

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Some of the characters include Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Bugs Bunny, and Scooby-Doo, as well as other popular characters from Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Rick and Morty and The Powerpuff Girls.

WBD further claimed that the service publicly displays, performs, and makes available for download unauthorised derivatives, reproducing these characters in countless scenarios without permission.

The entertainment giant also alleged that Midjourney’s infringement was “systematic, ongoing and wilful.”

It added that Midjourney knowingly infringes its copyrighted characters. This is especially since Midjourney had temporarily blocked “many outputs” featuring WBD characters when it first launched its video generation service.

However, the AI company lifted the protections, promoting the change as an “improvement” to its video moderations that allows subscribers to experience “fewer blocked jobs.”

“Midjourney has made a calculated and profit-driven decision to offer zero protection for copyright owners even though Midjourney knows about the breathtaking scope of its piracy and copyright infringement,” WBD said in the complaint, seen by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

The 87-page long complaint included examples of outputs from Midjourney in comparison to WBD’s copyrighted characters.

Following which, WBD is seeking both financial compensation and a legal order to prevent continued use of its copyrighted material. This includes unspecified damages and disgorgement of Midjourney’s profits resulting from the infringement, statutory damages of up to US$150,000 per infringed work due to willful copyright violations, or other amounts deemed appropriate under US copyright law.

It is also seeking attorneys’ fees and full legal costs and a permanent injunctions to stop further infringement.

The lawsuit follows a similar complaint filed in June against Midjourney by Walt Disney and Comcast’s Universal over characters including Darth Vader, The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda from the Star Wars movies and TV shows, Bart and Homer Simpson from The Simpsons, Iron Man and Spider-Man from Marvel, Ariel from The Little Mermaid, as well as other IPs such as Toy Story, Shrek, Cars and Frozen.

“By helping itself to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works and then distributing images (and soon videos) that blatantly incorporate and copy Disney’s and Universal’s famous characters - without investing a penny in their creation - Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” Disney and NBCU said in the lawsuit.

“Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing. Midjourney’s conduct misappropriates Disney’s and Universal’s intellectual property and threatens to upend the bedrock incentives of U.S. copyright law that drive American leadership in movies, television, and other creative arts,” both companies added.

Disney and NBCU said that before they sued Midjourney, they asked the company “to stop its theft of their intellectual property”. Despite that, Midjourney “has continued to release new versions of its image service, which, according to Midjourney’s founder and CEO, have even higher-quality infringing images.”

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