Disney and Universal sue Midjourney

Background

Midjourney provides an AI image-generation service that customers use through a subscription.^[4] A user describes the picture they want in text, and the system returns images in response. That is the general pattern for generative image tools: they learn from very large collections of pictures and then produce new ones on demand. Such tools put image-making within reach of anyone who can type a sentence, and they also turn the origin of the output — how close it is to existing works — into a legal question.

Copyright law gives the owner of a work a set of exclusive rights, including the rights to reproduce the work, to display it and to distribute copies of it. Whether a generative service infringes those rights when its output resembles a protected character turns on the specific facts of the case and on defences such as fair use.

The first lawsuit

On 11 June 2025, Disney and Universal sued Midjourney for copyright infringement.^[1][2] The claim was that the service had made use of the studios' copyrighted material without permission. A lawsuit of this kind does not settle anything by itself; it sets out the studios' allegations and asks a court to rule on them.

Warner Bros. Discovery files its own case

On 4 September 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery filed its own suit against Midjourney.^[3] Warner Bros. Discovery brought the case in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, joining Disney and NBCUniversal in challenging Midjourney's use of their content.^[4] The three complaints therefore came from studios with large libraries of well-known characters and films, all aimed at the same defendant.

What the complaint alleged

Warner Bros. Discovery's complaint said Midjourney thinks it is above the law and sells a subscription service developed using illegal copies of Warner Bros. Discovery's copyrighted works.^[4] The complaint said the service lets subscribers pick iconic Warner Bros. Discovery characters and reproduces, displays and distributes images and videos featuring them without consent.^[4]

The allegations have two parts, and they map onto two different questions in copyright law. The first concerns how the service was built: the complaint's claim is that the system was developed using unauthorized copies of the studio's works. The second concerns what the service does for its users: the claim is that a subscriber can name a well-known character and receive images or video featuring it. The first question is about the material used in development; the second is about the output the service delivers.

Consolidation and a discovery dispute

In November 2025, the three studios' cases were consolidated.^[2] Consolidation is a procedural step: related lawsuits against the same defendant, raising overlapping facts, are brought together so that they proceed on a shared schedule rather than in parallel. It does not decide the merits of any claim.

In July 2026, Midjourney sought review of a discovery ruling about the studios' own use of AI.^[2] Discovery is the pre-trial stage at which each side must hand over documents and answer questions from the other. The ruling at issue concerned the studios' own use of AI tools, and Midjourney asked for that ruling to be reviewed. The dispute therefore moved from the filing of complaints to the exchange of evidence, including evidence about the studios' own practices.

What the case is about

The litigation is a copyright dispute between film studios and an AI image company, and its shape is visible in the record: complaints filed in 2025, consolidation in November 2025, and a fight over evidence in 2026. The complaints focus on how the service was developed and on what it produces when a subscriber asks for a familiar character.^[4] Both are questions that copyright law answers case by case, which is why the procedural steps — consolidation and the discovery dispute — matter as much as the initial filings.