Disney, Universal Sue AI Firm Midjourney for Copyright Infringement

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Walt Disney Co. and Universal Pictures have sued the AI image generator platform Midjourney for mass copyright infringement. Plagiarism is alleged to have been carried out on the intellectual property of the two giant animation studios.

Midjourney has tools that allow its users to create images by simply giving text commands. The platform, developed by an independent research laboratory, currently has 20 million users on Discord servers.

The lawsuit alleges that all of this was possible because Midjourney trained its AI model using copyrighted material belonging to both studios.

Thus, Midjourney users were able to create images that blatantly used and copied famous Disney and Universal characters, including Universal's Minions and Disney's Lion King.

Disney's Head of Legal and Compliance, Horacio Gutierrez, said that Disney remains optimistic about the responsible use of AI technology to advance human creativity. However, Gutierrez emphasized that piracy is still piracy.

"And the fact that it’s done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing," he said, as quoted from the Los Angeles Times report published on Wednesday, June 11, 2025.

The lawsuit was filed the same day in the District Court in Los Angeles, United States, marking the first case of major animation studios bringing AI-related intellectual property theft to court.

Disney and Universal joined their subsidiaries in the lawsuit, including Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century, and DreamWorks Animation.

Gutierrez stated that Disney's intellectual property was built with financial investment, creativity, and innovation over decades. He said that this investment was only made possible by the incentives contained in copyright law, which give creators exclusive rights to profit from their work.

NBC Universal's General Counsel, Kim Harris, made similar remarks to Gutierrez, stating that theft remains theft "regardless of the technology used."

"We are bringing this action today to protect the hard work of all the artists whose work entertains and inspires us and the significant investment we make in our content," Harris said in the same report.

In their lawsuit, Disney and Universal referred to Midjourney as a "quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism." Midjourney was also accused of disregarding requests from the two studios to stop infringing on copyrights before the lawsuit was eventually filed.

The 110-page lawsuit also included 30 images created by Midjourney and compared them to images of characters from Disney and Universal. In addition to Minions and Lion King, there were images of characters such as Yoda and Darth Vader from Star Wars, Iron Man, Hulk, and animated characters from Frozen, The Simpsons, Shrek, and Kung Fu Panda.

The coloring, animation style, and specific details were also contested. For instance, the logo on the space suit of Lighting McQueen and the resemblance of Buzz Lightyear to the original work were criticized.

The lawsuit was welcomed by various groups, such as Ed Newton-Rex, a nonprofit organization that advocates for fair training practices for AI companies. “This is a great day for creators around the world," he said, as reported by New Scientist.

Thus far, there has been no comment or official statement from Midjourney, either to the LA Times or New Scientist.

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