Warner Bros. Discovery filed a complaint against the Popular Midjourney Image generator, accusing him of stealing and exploiting her intellectual properties. The complaint revolves around the capacity of the AI tool to generate images and videos of Warner Bros. ‘Popular fictitious characters, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Scooby Doo, Bugs Bunny and his friends from Looney Tunes. “Midjourney thinks it is above the law,” wrote the company in its trial. He said the image generator sells a commercial subscription service powered by AI technology which was illegally trained using his copyright protected works.
The company argued that Midjourney has technology to prevent users from generating images of the characters he has. He apparently refused to generate videos based on Warner Bros. ‘Properties when he launched his video model for the first time. But in the past two weeks, he would have deleted these protections and declared to his users that they would meet “fewer blocked jobs”. The ability to generate Warner Bros. ‘Characters are a clear draw for its subscription service which costs $ 10 to $ 120 per month, said the conglomerate of the media. “It is difficult to imagine a violation of copyright which is more voluntary than Midjourney does here,” added the applicant. “Midjourney has prioritized and sought to preserve the hundreds of millions of dollars he earns each year from his service by doubling his flight of works protected by copyright.”
In the complaint, the company gave several examples of video images and images generated by children alongside the images and screenshots of its films and shows. The image above, for example, shows Midjourney’s release from the prompt “Batman, Screencap by The Dark Knight”. Besides the real promotional material of the Christian film led by Bale. In addition, generic prompts like “classic comic strip superhero battle” could lead to output with WB characters even if they are not specifically mentioned.
Midjourney is already faced with a trial for violation of copyright filed by Disney and Universal Studios in June. They accused the AI service of “Help[ing] Himself to countless works protected by copyright to train their models and for their copyright by allowing users to generate images of Star Wars, Shrek, The Simpsons and Despicable Me, among other properties.
Warner Bros. Discovery is now asking the court for statutory damages of “up to $ 150,000 per work violated by the voluntary violation of Midjourney”. We contacted Midjourney and update this post when we hear.
