Disney and Universal team up to sue AI photo generator Midjourney, claiming copyright infringement
迪士尼與環球影業公司聯合起來對人工智能照片生成公司Midjourney提起侵害著作權訴訟。
Disney and Universal are suing AI photo generation company Midjourney, marking the first major legal showdown between Hollywood studios and an artificial intelligence company.
Midjourney所有的生成模型可使用戶輸入提示詞後數秒生成仿真的圖像，此乃時下最受歡迎的一款圖像生成器。
Midjourney, which enables users to create realistic-looking images from a text prompt in just seconds, is one of the most popular AI image generators. The movie companies allege that Midjourney trained its AI models on their intellectual property and that it generates images featuring their famous characters in violation of copyright law, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in California federal court.
迪士尼於其訴狀中指稱，Midjourney所為猶如虛擬販賣機無底洞之剽竊，其無止盡生成未經迪士尼與環球等授權有著作權之著作。
In their complaint, the studios call Midjourney a “virtual vending machine” and “bottomless pit of plagiarism” that generates “endless unauthorized copies of Disney’s and Universal’s copyrighted works.”
Most large, publicly available AI models are trained on large repositories of data, including images and video, from across the internet, often without asking permission. Artists, authors, musicians and Hollywood actors have also raised concerns about their work or likeness being used to train generative AI tools, which could then be used to replace them. Midjourney and other AI firms were sued in a separate copyright infringement case by a group of visual artists in 2023, which the companies have sought to dismiss but which is currently in discovery.
But Wednesday’s lawsuit marks the first time major Hollywood studios have sued an AI company.