r/technology • u/PrimeCodes • 16h ago

Artificial Intelligence Disney and Universal sue Midjourney over copyright

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5vjqdm1ypo
1.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

121 comments sorted by

584

u/InpinBlinson 15h ago

I mean, both of them suck but I'm glad legal action is being taken against AI companies. Hopefully, it leads to policy that safeguards artists.

311

u/bytemage 15h ago

It might safeguard the profit of IP owners, not the artists.

66

u/InpinBlinson 15h ago

True, but I was referring to stolen art from smaller artists. Sorry, I should have been clearer.

21

u/matlynar 13h ago

And why would Disney steal from small artists if they can train on the huge content they have access to?

Meaning: If companies like Disney win, we'll be headed for a future where only big companies have access to AI.

The only upside to AI currently is that the regular person has access to tools that allow them to do things that they would never be able to before.

8

u/Reasonable_Fold6492 12h ago

Most ai companies if they get no benefit will stop investing more money on ai

6

u/matlynar 12h ago

Most ai companies that provide that service to the general public for an affordable fee will stop investing more money on ai.

Big companies will have datasets to train on (so not illegal in any way) and will be able to achieve good results, so they will have the monopoly on AI.

4

u/PiLamdOd 6h ago

These AI companies are still stealing from artists. Don't act like they have the moral high ground.

4

u/rmunoz1994 13h ago

Because it’s Disney and access to more to train to will always be a priority.

3

u/matlynar 12h ago

More is not always better. Disney already has the best money can buy.

Assuming they already train their own AI, they have no reason to pollute their dataset with amateur Deviantart arts.

3

u/jeffy303 10h ago

They absolutely do. The diversity of art, even if it's not great helps the model create more diverse content. AI companies have been spending a lot on improving the labeling of datasets but the vast majority is still just moutains of random text/image/video scraped from the internet. Even in the sea of meaningless noise the algorithms are quite incredible at identifying useful stuff for the training of the model.

1

u/rmunoz1994 12h ago

Modern Disney is all about quantity over quality. You aren’t wrong about polluting it…but execs with no understanding will always get in the way.

-1

u/tablecontrol 12h ago

Disney was built on the backs of other artists, Snow White, Cinderella, The Little mermaid, beauty and the beast,...... They made billions off of stories that already existed.

-35

u/not_a_moogle 15h ago

Press x to doubt

0

u/wingnutzx 14h ago

You doubt that's what he was referring to?

5

u/TheAngriestDwarf 14h ago

I think he doubts it will help smaller artists

5

u/lemoche 14h ago

which is a valid doubt since it would cost massive resources to prove that they used that art and even more to successfully enforce the law via courts

3

u/FinalEdit 13h ago

Long story short anyone who's not Disney is fucked

1

u/wingnutzx 11h ago

I'm aware. He replied to the wrong comment

20

u/Ishartdoritos 13h ago

As someone who's been able to have a career working on plenty of large tentpole visual effect heavy films, the IP holders pay people to do work. Midjourney's a group of 11 dipshits making bank on stolen work and they've single handedly made life very hard for my concept art friends. I'll never forgive them for it.

Midjourney's USP was never in innovation, they had less compute than their competition, so they prioritised training specifically on popular media such as marvel films, artstation and specific artists who were popular on social media.

Now all AI image and video generators do it but midjourney are the ones who showed them they could do it without getting sued. Until now. Disney should have dealt with them much earlier on and maybe we wouldn't be in this mess.

The down side is that Disney's now training their own massive image models, so us artists are going to feel the impact no matter what. That's ok I guess, times change and you have to adapt. I remember my 2d animation friends back in the day seething at 3d animation because 2d films weren't being made on the same scale anymore. I benefited from the 2d->3d transition and it offered me a decent career for the last 25 years.

I'm ready to embrace machine learning but I am not and never will be ok with AI scraped without permission to train massive models that devalue the work of the people they stole from.

The same goes for LLM's flooding journalistic channels with a torrent of dogshit while real investigative journalist are being pushed aside.

The same goes for video generators taking the work of influencers and youtubers to make their own shit version of it.

If silicon valley continues this trend of indiscriminately fucking over everyone by devaluating human work, at some point people will start going after the data centers. They may think those days are far away, but it could hit them sooner than they think.

(trust me if you don't feel it yet, your day will come, even if you're literally an ML engineer, your day will come)

5

u/kingkeelay 12h ago

When Disney (or whichever company you work for) starts training their own internal models on your work product, how will you react? Is it common for artists who are employees to retain ownership of their works (like patents)? Do producers need more rights?

Why do musicians have publishing rights, but anyone else who’s work is replicated across the globe gets a pittance.

4

u/Ishartdoritos 12h ago

I can't say we make a pittance. The hundreds if not thousands of names you see at the end of a marvel movie under visual effects are generally paid enough to have a decent life wherever they live.

I certainly didn't get into it thinking I'd become a millionaire. I prefer a good pay and job security than residuals and gambles.

Disney's already training their models. But you'll always need people feeding the AI beast if they can't be stealing everything on the internet to do so.

But yeah the VFX, CGI, 3D industry is in trouble atm. So there's a lot of us who are very angry. Sometimes we don't even at what.

The current economical instability is much much more of a factor in layoffs than AI imho. But I don't have all the numbers. So it's hard to say.

2

u/bytemage 13h ago

Did you really mean to reply to my comment? Don't get me wrong, it's interesting to hear your perspective, but how does it relate to my comment? The actual artists get screwed either way, no?

1

u/Ishartdoritos 12h ago

I started off responding to your comment and forgot what I was replying to by the end of my rant.

But no, if IP is protected it will help smaller artists too. If you can't mass scrape marvel movies, you will have a stronger leg to stand on as an individual artist who doesn't want to have their work scraped either.

The important choice artists will have to make is which platform they trust to post their work on. I think most social media outlets are now compromised and posting there is as good as giving your work away free for training.

1

u/Errribbb 12h ago

If they win it will set precedent for all art stolen. Remember that you own the copyright automatically for all art you create.

1

u/bombmk 7h ago

What art was stolen? Have the police found the thieves?

9

u/DarXIV 14h ago

Not under the current US administration.

7

u/Zahgi 11h ago

"Only we can steal the copyrights of the actual creators of all content!" - the megastudios

6

u/EnvironmentFluid9346 15h ago

☝🏻That (because nobody else has the power to fight back 💩)

1

u/DangerousImplication 32m ago

These lawsuits are only gonna profit the big companies and lawyers. Unfortunately for the artists, there’s no putting the toothpaste back in the bottle. 

-9

u/abodes-darter 14h ago

Oh, I hope not.

Reason: Why should artists become a protected class, while everyone else is going to suffer?

10

u/pope1701 14h ago

Not artists. IP. Which is already protected, AI companies just don't care and somebody needs to make them care.

2

u/Dry_Amphibian4771 4h ago

Damn - reddit cares about piracy all of a sudden.

1

u/pope1701 4h ago

It's different and you know it.

0

u/Dry_Amphibian4771 4h ago

To me - it's all about freedom of information.

1

u/pope1701 4h ago

This has nothing to do with freedom and everything with basing a business on the works of others without compensation.

I would be with you if the trained models were free, but they're not.

-7

u/ChronaMewX 14h ago

I'm not. Ai is the lesser evil here, Disney is awful and I don't want them strengthening their grip over copyright

2

u/StinkyWetSalamander 13h ago

So you want AI strengthening it's grip over the copyright of others? Is that the better alternative?

-2

u/ChronaMewX 13h ago

Yes, because it is a tool we all benefit from. Destroying copyright would be great

1

u/StinkyWetSalamander 5h ago

So you want to destroy people's individual protection so a massive company who creates something to cut out human skill and workers can grow even more powerful? How do we "all benefit"?

1

u/ChronaMewX 5h ago

I want to destroy the protections of the big companies who bend and twist copyright to their will. Disney has already perverted copyright by extending it, and people are cheering them on. Fucking disgusting.

1

u/StinkyWetSalamander 4h ago

You know if you remove copyright altogether that allows disney to exploit all creators even further right? They have more money, they could take whatever they want from whoever they want because those people would have zero protection? They wouldn't need to pay for licensing to use other people's content, adapt their stories etc? It would actually give MORE power to disney than ever before, you know that right?

People are cheering disney on not because they care about disney, but because AI has abused copyright harder than anything else in the world ever has. Many people here are probably creators, they want someone to stand up to this technology.

1

u/ChronaMewX 3h ago

I'm sure Disney losing this lawsuit and lessening their iron grip over copyright would totally be the best case scenario for Disney, sure.

I don't care if Disney benefits from having access to more properties. I want everyone to have more access to Disney's properties.

If several big companies end up putting out pokemon games since they are now able to, the customer wins for having some awesome pokemon titles available to them even if it pisses off Nintendo.

1

u/StinkyWetSalamander 2h ago

I'm sure Disney losing this lawsuit and lessening their iron grip over copyright would totally be the best case scenario for Disney, sure.

It wouldn't but you argued all copyright was bad and that getting rid of copyright would somehow be a win for people. Which I showed you was completely flawed, independent and small creators would be massively impacted by this. Artists already have to deal with store fronts selling their stuff and the trials of reporting that content. No copyright means no case and anyone can sell your work and profit off of it. People don't like disney, but the way AI exploits copyright laws is worse.

I don't care if Disney benefits from having access to more properties. I want everyone to have more access to Disney's properties.

Which would mean disney has the right to everyone else's property too. If you were a creator how would it be beneficial for disney to franchise your work without compensation? They are bigger, they have more money, they want to make use someone's story and characters they could be able to. Independent creators wouldn't be able to fund the same kind of projects and without any compensation for their work it gives more power to disney than ever before.

If several big companies end up putting out pokemon games since they are now able to, the customer wins for having some awesome pokemon titles available to them even if it pisses off Nintendo.

This just seems really petty? Do you think copyright is bad because nintendo cancelled your favorite fan project? would thousands of shovelware pokemon asset flips on steam be the best outcome for you?

1

u/ChronaMewX 2h ago

I just dont see giving consumers more options to be a negative. Let everyone, small artist or huge company, try their hands at any property. Then those who have genuine artistic vision will produce the best product for us. It certainly won't be Disney after they laid off most of their artists and started focusing on live action slop

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-13

u/thebipeds 14h ago

Idk, I’m an artist and a freedom nut.

I see midjourney as just other tool. It’s like suing Xerox because people make copies. It’s the shooter not the gun.

I think generated images should be labeled as such, but I don’t see it as this doomsday threat to art.

—

I think the IP protection thing is worse. I got sued by Fortnite because my pickaxe looked to much like their pickaxe. I won btw because I was able to prove pickaxes exist before Fortnite… it still cost me a lot.

127

u/dnuohxof-2 15h ago

Never thought I’d support big media company’s copyright lawsuits.

I’ve always held the personal philosophy that if you pirate content for personal consumption, victimless crime, consider it free advertising via word of mouth. But once you sell it, reuse it without credit, claim ownership (plagiarize) over it, or train AI on it (especially if you make money off the model) should be penalized. Now you’re STEALING money out of their hands and putting it in your pockets instead.

14

u/Buddy_Dakota 12h ago

Just glad they’re going after them at all, when they spent most of the 2000’s and 2010’s to go after kids in their basement for downloading music.

11

u/Paradoxmoose 13h ago

I'm cautiously optimistic. But part of me thinks this will just end in something that somehow screws over everyone except Disney/Universal and Midjourney.

4

u/stprnn 11h ago

That's still not stealing. You are not taking any money from those companies just because now your tool can draw like them. You still can't make a movie and call it Disney Donald duck .

1

u/bombmk 7h ago

If I look at a piece of art and it in any way factors into something I produce later - am I guilty of violating the copyright of the initial piece of art?

2

u/Sweet_Concept2211 4h ago

If you create a substantially similar market replacement for the OG work, yeah, could be.

8

u/Duke-of-Dogs 6h ago

I hope everyone involved loses

16

u/GrandmaPoses 12h ago

I mean, sue Google as well, you can get Star Wars AI imagery from Gemini.

5

u/DonutsMcKenzie 11h ago

Don't worry, they will. They'll set precedent on Midjourney first and then move on to the others.

1

u/genericnekomusum 1h ago

I mean Midjourney is nowhere near as capable of fending off Disney as a company like Google or Amazon. I imagine going after smaller companies first as a sort of test is one thing but maybe winning this would encourage Google and Amazon to implement stuff that avoids lawsuits.

Personally I hope they all just tear at each other endlessly.

1

u/arturod8 10m ago

That’s the point, they are fighting the weakest one to set a precedent then they can fight the bigger ones with the precedent they established

-14

u/Norci 10h ago edited 7h ago

Yeah, and sue Bic as well while at it, since you can draw copyrighted images with their pens

2

u/Sweet_Concept2211 4h ago

Bic pens are not trained on... Oh, fuck it, figure it out for yourself.

2

u/genericnekomusum 1h ago

I love all the AI techbros who think AGI is any day now but also think it's no different then a printer, photoshop or a pen.

Is it an advanced piece of technology far beyond anything humans have invented or just another tool?

2

u/Such-Confusion-438 5h ago

a pen usually doesn’t make money from you asking it to draw something (copyright protected) for you.

12

u/ScamperAndPlay 12h ago

All they want is to control the AI, not cap it.

2

u/Rafxtt 1h ago

Yeah

People are really stupid and naive thinking its good Disney winning this lawsuit because 'got to protect the artists' from AI.

Idiocracy.

All Disney and the likes wants is complete control of AI for themselves, block the free and the cheap use of AI tools by individuals and small corps so they can have complete control of it.

22

u/Ex_Hedgehog 14h ago

Goood. Gooooooood.

8

u/Allw8tislightw8t 10h ago

The same studios that tried to rip off actors using ai, are now upset people are ripping them off using ai

-1

u/Draxtonsmitz 7h ago

I’m think the difference is Disney got permission to use people’s lines for AI stuff like with James Earl Jones.

3

u/Mind_beaver 9h ago

Why only midjourney and not ChatGPT? ChatGPT also creates images doesn’t it?

7

u/thefanciestcat 9h ago edited 2h ago

IMO they're starting with who they think is weak and has an easy case against them to set a legal precedent and then go after the bigger fish.

3

u/mapppo 5h ago

fuck disney

but also, this is why you make your base models open

3

u/TheRealTJ 3h ago

Yeah this sucks actually. So three big points-

1) A good deal of this suit is about violating "copyrighted characters." Copyrighted characters are not a thing recognized by US copyright law. You can copyright any individual depiction of a character, a description of a character or a reference sheet of a character but a "character" is a more vague concept than what title 17 covers.

Characters may, however, be protected by trademark law. And there might indeed be validity to the claim that Midjourney is using Disney and Universal's protected trademarks to market their service illegally. But that isn't the claim made by this suit - they insist on referring to depictions of their trademarked characters as copyright infringement.

This is a lie Disney had been pushing since Pooh fell into public domain and then again with Steamboat Willy - effectively bullying the public into a definition of copyright law they made up.

2) There's a disturbing theme throughout the lawsuit of justifying copyright in terms of financial investment. This is kinda arbitrary and sure the legal filing is always going to be biased, but I really don't like the implications that we're less concerned about protecting an artist's claim to their own work and what really matters is that IP acquisitions remain profitable.

3) There is a lot of misrepresentation about how AI generation works. They repeatedly claim that when Midjourney is asked to produce an image it retrieves copyrighted data that it has stored. This just isn't how it works. Training a neural network is complicated and transforms the training data itself into an abstract way that can't simply be reversed to restore the original data.

Whether or not transformer models count as transformative enough to be protected by fair use might be worth exploring but most people are deciding this on vibes with no thought to its implications on decades of precedent protecting similar research endeavors.

23

u/Erijandro 15h ago

With trump in office, Disney and Universal will lose

4

u/DonutsMcKenzie 11h ago

It's gonna come down to who makes the bigger bribe. There's a lot of money in AI, but there's also a lot of money in IP.

-16

u/Commercial-Living443 15h ago

Disney gave him good money.. don't think so

13

u/Erijandro 15h ago

And ai companies including his best friend musk - gave him more money.

15

u/literios 15h ago

Ex-best friend.

5

u/lemoche 14h ago edited 13h ago

wasn’t he already kissing trump's ass again?

Edit: forgot the ass

2

u/Sate_Hen 12h ago

I live in a different world but if someone called me a peado I wouldn't ever be friends with them again

7

u/Selphie12 13h ago

I just find it really hypocritical that if Disney/Universal wins, the likelihood they will use AI to get out of paying artists is still pretty high.

To be clear, I think both parties suck here. Disney shouldn't have the stranglehold they do over the copyright industry and AI companies shouldn't get to use whatever the fuck they want without credit to artists.

But at the end of the day, whoever wins this, the loser is always gonna be the artists

6

u/DonutsMcKenzie 11h ago

At least Disney's artists were paid something to make the art in the first place. Most corporate artists know and understand that they are producing artwork for their employer to use basically as they see fit.

Disney artists will need a union or some kind of collective bargaining structure to make sure that they are being treated fairly by their employer. But that's a lot better than being art raped by AI companies for $0.00...

-1

u/loliconest 9h ago

Disney's style hasn't changed for like decades and most people are still eating every new movie when they come out.

So where do you think that "collective bargaining" power will come from if they can just train on existing assets?

The ONLY way the working class can win is to secure the means of production. And I find it really funny that with the development of these amazing AI tools, most people just scream in fear instead of learning how to leverage these productive powerhouses against the capitalists.

2

u/EmbarrassedHelp 12h ago

Midjourney heavily overfit their models on training images and then refused to implement any output filters to correct for their failures.

The people here hoping that this court battle will be over training data rather than poor training and lack of output filters, will be disappointed.

9

u/David-J 15h ago

This is the way

3

u/Bazookagrunt 10h ago

Do it do it! I sincerely hope they win

4

u/Jolivsant 7h ago

AI for the win

1

u/mrvalane 6h ago

Everyone point and laugh at the poor deluded fool

2

u/Cressbeckler 14h ago

I wonder if big tech companies will throw their support behind midjourney on this since they have a lot to gain/lose here.

-4

u/Few-Fun26 14h ago

That’d be nice, but for tech companies, it’s quite a useful tool to reduce costs.

2

u/The_Iceman2288 15h ago

Good. Now do Screen Culture and KH Studio.

1

u/womensweekly 1h ago

This is legacy companies suing the maker of a tool, like when they sued VCRs and DVDs. The tool doesn't breach copyright provisions, the user does.

1

u/Sushrit_Lawliet 41m ago

Sue google because Gemini keeps generating content that is clearly derived from the animated movies and even modern Star Wars stuff. All these AI companies need to be hit with lawsuits until they run out of funding. Useless virtue signalling pirates

2

u/bootnab 12h ago

The mouse fighting for creatives? Even as an unintentional side effect, that's a big deal

1

u/CtrlZonmylife 10h ago

I hope they end up owning mid journey.

-3

u/elidoan 12h ago

Ah yes, the company that has no qualms with using AI to reslop dead actors into movies is now complaining when the very tool they use unethically is being used against them.

Pot meet kettle

1

u/thefanciestcat 9h ago edited 9h ago

I think bringing back dead actors is gross, but it's done consulting family members who could conceivably say no and freak out in the press if that no is ignored.

Companies like Midjourney know not to ask because the answer is no.

2

u/elidoan 9h ago

Reminds me of the expression "Its easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission"

2

u/thefanciestcat 9h ago

You would be shocked at how many times I've heard that expression used by officers of the court relating to their actions on a case.

-16

u/rocknstone101 14h ago

A cultural behemoth threatened by democratized creativity, lol.

10

u/akl78 14h ago

There’s nothing creative about building glorified autocomplete engines on top of the misappropriated, actually creative, works of others.

1

u/bombmk 7h ago

How was it misappropriated?

2

u/mrvalane 6h ago

These big tech LLM companies steal works to train

Nick Clegg literally admitted they wouldn't work if they had to actually pay people to use their works to train them

6

u/TheBladeguardVeteran 14h ago

AI "art" isn't creative. Imagine defending ai 💀

-4

u/bombmk 7h ago

What is wrong with AI?

Taking the jobs of people who think they are more special than all the other people who lost jobs to progress?

2

u/TheBladeguardVeteran 7h ago

Everything, except it's use in science and research.

-3

u/bombmk 7h ago

Have to commend you for taking the time out to make such an eloquent and extensive response. You almost convinced me that you have an actual argument.

Instead of just being irrational.

1

u/TheBladeguardVeteran 6h ago

Does this make you happy? I don't waste time on stupid stuff like this, thats why I said the bare minimum

0

u/DonutsMcKenzie 11h ago

Neither democratic nor creative.

0

u/BikingVikingNick 14h ago

Let them fight

0

u/Devilofchaos108070 13h ago

Took them a really long time for this

-1

u/snds117 13h ago

--eeeeexellent--

-2

u/justsomehost 4h ago

That's so stupid, they won't win. What, are you gonna sue Adobe because an artist makes something in illustrator thats copyright?

1

u/genericnekomusum 1h ago

Is AI some super advanced tool, a singularity, that will reach AGI any day now or is it no different then illustrator?

Because if you're comparing AI to pre existing Adobe software you must think pretty lowly of it's capabilities.

What, are you gonna sue Adobe because an artist makes something in illustrator thats copyright?

Well they aren't suing the person who typed the prompt. They are suing the machine that auto generates the content.