Walt Disney and Comcast Universal studios filed a copyright lawsuit against Midjourney on June 11, 2025, calling it a "bottomless pit of plagiarism". In the complaint filed in California Federal Court, the companies allege that the AI image generator created and distributed innumerable copies of their iconic characters without permission, including Star Wars' Darth Vader, Frozen's Elsa, and Despicable Me's Minions. The studios claim Midjourney ignored their previous request to cease using copyrighted works or, at minimum, implement technological measures to prevent the creation of AI-generated characters.
Midjourney, founded by David Holz in 2021, generated $300 million in revenue last year and currently has 21 million subscribers. The San Francisco-based company used millions of images found on the internet to train its AI model. In a 2022 Forbes interview, Holz admitted building the database by performing a big scrape of the Internet, and when asked whether he sought consent from creators of copyright-protected works, responded: there isn't really a way to get a hundred million images and know where they're coming from. Examples presented by the studios included images of Yoda wielding a lightsaber, Bart Simpson riding a skateboard, Marvel's Iron Man soaring above clouds, and Pixar's Buzz Lightyear taking flight, as well as Universal characters such as Toothless dragon, Shrek, and Po from Kung Fu Panda.
Disney and Universal are seeking a preliminary injunction from the court to prevent Midjourney from copying their works, as well as damages that could reach $150,000 per infringed work across more than 150 named works, potentially exceeding $20 million in total. The lawsuit is part of a growing wave of legal actions brought by copyright owners, including authors, news outlets, and record labels against tech companies for using copyrighted materials without permission for AI training. Horacio Gutierrez, Disney's executive vice president and chief legal officer, stated: We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity, but piracy is piracy, and the fact that it's done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing.
Sources:
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Clare Duffy
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Blake Montgomery
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The studios accuse Midjourney of using their iconic characters—like Darth Vader, Elsa and the Minions—to train and generate images without permission
