Warner Bros Discovery sues Midjourney over use of iconic characters
Filed in a Los Angeles court, the complaint claims that Midjourney "stole" the studio’s intellectual property to train its image and video generation tools, allowing users to create high-quality, downloadable visuals featuring Warner Bros’ protected characters.
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American media conglomerate Warner Bros Discovery has filed a lawsuit against AI image-generation company Midjourney, alleging that it unlawfully used copyrighted characters—including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Bugs Bunny, and Scooby-Doo—to train its AI models, according to a report by The Economic Times.
Filed in a Los Angeles court, the complaint claims that Midjourney "stole" the studio’s intellectual property to train its image and video generation tools, allowing users to create high-quality, downloadable visuals featuring Warner Bros’ protected characters.
Warner Bros further alleged that Midjourney was fully aware its actions were infringing. The studio pointed out that Midjourney had previously blocked users from generating videos using infringing content—only to lift those restrictions last month, framing the change as an “improvement.”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, disgorgement of profits, and a permanent injunction against further infringements.
This action follows a similar lawsuit in June filed by Walt Disney and Comcast’s Universal, targeting Midjourney for unauthorized use of characters such as Darth Vader, Shrek, Bart Simpson, and Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
