Hollywood studios sue AI company over ‘unauthorised' Darth Vader and Minions copies
The copyright lawsuit in a Los Angeles federal court claims Midjourney pirated the libraries of the two Hollywood studios to generate and distribute 'endless unauthorised copies' of their famed characters, such as Darth Vader from the Star Wars franchise and the Minions from Despicable Me.
'Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism. Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing,' the companies state in the complaint.
The studios also say the San Francisco-based AI company ignored their requests to stop infringing on their copyrighted works and to take technological measures to halt such image generation.
Midjourney didn't respond to a request for comment but its CEO David Holz addressed the lawsuit in a weekly conference call with users on Wednesday after someone asked if it would endanger the tiny start-up's future.
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'I can't really discuss any ongoing legal things because the world isn't cool like that, but I think Midjourney is going to be around for a very long time,' Holz said. 'I think everybody wants us to be around.'
In a 2022 interview with The Associated Press, Holz described his image-making service as 'kind of like a search engine' pulling in a wide swath of images from across the internet. He compared copyright concerns about the technology with how such laws have adapted to human creativity.
'Can a person look at somebody else's picture and learn from it and make a similar picture?' Holz said. 'Obviously, it's allowed for people and if it wasn't, then it would destroy the whole professional art industry, probably the non-professional industry too. To the extent that AIs are learning like people, it's sort of the same thing and if the images come out differently then it seems like it's fine.'
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