As part of an ongoing legal dispute with three Hollywood studios, AI startup Midjourney is trying to force those studios to disclose how they use AI.
Disney and Universal sued Midjourney for copyright infringement last year noted that the startup’s image creation models could create the likes of studio-owned characters like Bart Simpson and Darth Vader. A few months later, Warner Bros sued Midjourney also.
The startup claims that training AI models on images of copyrighted characters is allowed under fair use conditions.
The current debate revolves around the documents studios will have to prepare during the discovery process. A judge previously ruled that studios would indeed have to report their use of generative artificial intelligence — but only if it led to “consumer-facing” videos and images.
In his final presentationMidjourney seeks to overturn this restriction, arguing that it “unfairly” allows the studios to “select only documents they believe support their market injury claims, while depriving Midjourney of documents that would support its defense.”
Midjourney continues to claim that “the documents (the studios) are keeping, behind closed doors, are documents that reveal whether or not they did what they’re suing Midjourney for doing.”
For example, the startup says, if studios are “developing AI models that generate imagery for internal use in storyboarding or content ideation for film or television, this evidence would equally prove that it is industry practice to download and train AI on unlicensed copyrighted content, even among studios themselves.”
In the filing, the startup also claims that studios should disclose all the instructions they use in Midjourney, as well as the resulting results, not just the instructions that produce distorted images.
Leading attorney of the studios David Singer previously claimed that Midjourney was looking for these documents as part of a “fishing expedition”.
He also said the studios “are not trying to stop AI technology or even put Midjourney out of business,” but rather “simply want Midjourney to stop copying their movies and TV shows and to stop distributing, publicly displaying, publicly displaying and creating derivative works that contain copies of popular characters without permission.”
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