Disney, Universal Sue AI Art Generator Midjourney Over Copyright Infringement

Los Angeles, June 6, 2025

Major entertainment companies Disney and Universal Pictures have initiated a lawsuit against artificial intelligence image generator Midjourney, alleging copyright infringement in the development and operation of its AI service.

The complaint, filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court on June 5, accuses Midjourney of using copyrighted character data from Disney and Universal’s libraries to train its large language model and distributing AI-generated images featuring these characters.

Specific copyrighted characters implicated

The lawsuit highlights several high-profile intellectual properties, including characters from Disney’s Star Wars, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Lion King, and The Simpsons; and characters from Universal’s Boss Baby and Shrek franchises.

According to the complaint, subscribers to Midjourney’s service can prompt the AI to create images resembling copyrighted characters, which can then be downloaded and distributed. Disney and Universal claim this violates the rights holders’ exclusive control over their characters.

“Midjourney is a ‘copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,’ generating revenue by creating derivative works without investing in the original characters,” Disney alleged.

Plaintiffs also stated Midjourney uses the copyrighted characters in its marketing materials.

Fruits of negotiation are absent

Disney announced it attempted to preempt litigation by requesting Midjourney implement safeguards to prevent the generation of images based on copyrighted works. These efforts allegedly failed, as Midjourney continued to develop and promote newer versions of its service, including commercial projections for AI video generation.

“Midjourney… controls which copyrighted content its service ingests and possesses the ability to employ protection mechanisms to halt further copying,” Disney asserted.

Part of a growing industry-wide challenge

This marks Disney’s and Universal’s first significant action against an AI company regarding copyright. However, they are joining a broader wave of legal challenges. In March 2025, 12 copyright cases involving unauthorized training data extraction were consolidated in New York targeting OpenAI and Microsoft. Anthropic previously faced a class-action suit in August 2024 from authors claiming similar unauthorized use of copyrighted works.