On June 11, 2025, film studios — including Disney, Universal and Marvel — filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AI image generator Midjourney in the Central District of California. Compl., Disney Enterprises, Inc., et al. v. Midjourney, Inc., No. 2:25cv5275 (C.D. Cal. June 11, 2025). This litigation is notable for several reasons.

This is the first time that a high-profile Hollywood studio has filed suit against a generative AI company. The complaint alleges that Midjourney unlawfully used the studios’ copyrighted characters (such as Yoda, Shrek, and the Minions) to train its AI models and disregarded the studios’ requests to refrain from the alleged infringement. The studios describe Midjourney as “the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” further alleging that its model “threatens to upend the bedrock incentives of U.S. copyright law that drive American leadership in movies, television, and other creative arts.” The studios are seeking $150,000 per infringed work, and with more than 150 works listed as exhibits in the complaint, the potential damages exceed $20 million.
Perhaps more importantly, the studios further allege that Midjourney’s AI model allows its users to generate unauthorized recreations of these characters. Anticipating Midjourney’s argument that its users (rather than the tool itself) are the catalysts of infringement, the studios claim that Midjourney is secondarily and vicariously liable because it “has specific knowledge of, or is willfully blind to, the direct infringement.” To highlight this knowledge, the studios point to the fact that Midjourney displays the allegedly infringing content on one of its main landing pages.

The Writers Guild of America and other independent artists welcomed the news that the studios were coming “off of the sidelines” in the debate over AI and intellectual property rights, a central issue in their 2023 strike negotiations.

Given this novel litigation approach, this case could set significant precedents for the generative AI industry, particularly concerning the responsibility of generative AI platforms for the actions of their users.