- Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a complaint against Midjourney for violating the company's copyrighted IPs.
- The Entertainment company seeks $150,000 per every image and video that they have created using their copyrighted characters.
- Midjourney offers subscriptions ranging from $10 to $120 per month to users.
We all know what AI has been doing lately; it’s picking up content from the Internet and reusing it to create its own content using the images or the text. Recently, the AI company Midjourney has been sued by Warner Bros. Discovery for infringing and plagiarizing their copyrighted characters.
For the unacquainted, Midjourney is an Artificial Intelligence firm that allows its subscribers or users to create images or videos using text prompts. For example, if a user instructs the AI platform to create an image or video of “Batman, where the classic Dark Knight armour,” Midjourney does exactly the same. For this, Midjourney offers a subscription ranging from $10 to $120 per month.
The problem with this platform is that it doesn’t give any credit to those who work tirelessly to create the iconic characters; basically, the company or corporation that originally owns the rights to these characters. On top of it, when you think about it, platforms like Midjourney train their AI systems by using the content that is not owned by them. In this case, Midjourney is able to create characters like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, which are the intellectual properties of Warner Bros. Discover.
This is obviously a concern for companies like Warner Bros. That is why the company filed a lawsuit against Midjourney and joined other companies like Universal and Disney, which sued the AI company earlier this year. The complaint that was filed this Thursday states that Midjourney “brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property.”
“The heart of what we do is develop stories and characters to entertain our audiences, bringing to life the vision and passion of our creative partners,”- Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. has sought $150,000 from Midjourney for every single image and video that they created unethically using the company’s content. This is obviously a big problem for Midjourney, but the AI company hasn’t released any official statement as of yet.
