Midjourney accuses Hollywood studios of their own AI copyright violations

Midjourney is pushing back against a major copyright lawsuit from Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. by demanding that the studios disclose how they use AI themselves.

As TechCrunch reports, the image generator is seeking these disclosures as part of its legal defense. Midjourney argues that the same studios accusing it of copyright infringement may be using third-party content to develop their own AI tools.

Disney and Universal filed the original lawsuit in June 2025, accusing Midjourney of enabling users to generate images of copyrighted characters ranging from Bart Simpson to Darth Vader. Warner Bros. Discovery joined the case in September, adding Batman and Superman to the list. The studios are seeking up to $150,000 for each infringed work.

Midjourney's main defense is based on fair use, with the company arguing that training AI models on publicly available images is legal. It has also invoked the doctrine of unclean hands, a legal principle that can limit a party's claims when it has engaged in similar conduct. Midjourney alleges that the studios are training their own AI models on third-party content for tasks including storyboarding and scene development.

"If Plaintiffs are doing the very thing they seek to punish, that evidence goes to the heart of Midjourney’s fair use and unclean hands defenses," Midjourney attorney Bobby Ghajar said.

The company is now seeking access to the studios' AI business plans, training datasets, model weights, and board-level presentations. It also wants records of prompts that studio employees may have entered into Midjourney itself.