Midjourney seeks details of Hollywood studios' AI use in copyright battle

AI image generation startup Midjourney has asked a court to require Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. to provide wider disclosures about how they use artificial intelligence as part of an ongoing copyright lawsuit, Tech Crunch reported.The dispute stems from legal action filed by Disney and Universal last year, alleging that Midjourney's image generation models could produce images of copyrighted characters such as Bart Simpson and Darth Vader. Warner Bros. later filed a similar lawsuit against the company.Midjourney has maintained that training its AI models using images of copyrighted characters is protected under the fair use doctrine.The latest disagreement concerns the discovery process, under which both sides exchange evidence. A judge had earlier directed the studios to disclose information about their use of generative AI only when it related to consumer facing images and videos.Midjourney is now asking the court to remove that restriction. In its filing, the company argued that the limitation unfairly allows the studios to choose only documents that support their claims of market harm while withholding material that could support Midjourney's defence.The company also argued that the withheld records could show whether the studios are engaging in the same AI practices they have challenged in court.According to the filing, if the studios are developing image generation tools for internal work such as storyboarding or content ideation for films and television, that could support Midjourney's argument that using unlicensed copyrighted material for AI training is an accepted industry practice.Midjourney has also asked the court to require the studios to disclose every prompt they entered into its platform, along with the corresponding outputs, instead of limiting production to prompts that allegedly generated infringing images.The studios have opposed the request. Their lead attorney, David Singer, previously described Midjourney's demand for the documents as a "fishing expedition."Singer also said the studios are not trying to stop AI technology or shut down Midjourney. Instead, he said they want the company to stop copying their films and television shows and stop distributing, publicly displaying, publicly performing and creating derivative works featuring their copyrighted characters without permission.