Midjourney has filed its first legal response to Disney and Universal’s copyright infringement lawsuit, arguing that AI training constitutes protected “fair use” and accusing the studios of hypocrisy. The AI image platform’s defense centers on claims that the entertainment giants are simultaneously using AI tools while seeking to restrict others from the same technology, potentially setting a precedent for how courts will balance AI innovation against traditional copyright protections.
What you should know: Midjourney’s legal team is mounting a comprehensive fair use defense while highlighting the studios’ own AI usage.
- The company argues that “copyright law does not confer absolute control over the use of copyrighted works” and that fair use protections must “safeguard countervailing public interests in the free flow of ideas and information.”
- Disney and Universal filed the original lawsuit in June, alleging “vast, intentional, and unrelenting copyright infringement” after users created nearly identical copies of their copyrighted characters.
- Unlike other AI training lawsuits, this case focuses primarily on AI outputs rather than the training process itself.
The hypocrisy argument: Midjourney claims Disney and Universal are trying to “have it both ways” by using AI while suing AI companies.
- Visual effects companies working with Disney and Universal regularly use Midjourney as a tool, according to the filing.
- “Many dozens” of Midjourney subscribers have email addresses linked to Disney and Universal, suggesting the studios’ own employees use the service.
- Disney CEO Bob Iger spoke positively about AI during a March annual meeting, calling technology “an invaluable tool for artists.”
What they’re saying: Midjourney’s lawyers argue the studios can’t profit from AI while simultaneously attacking it.
- “Plaintiffs cannot have it both ways, seeking to profit — through their use of Midjourney and other generative AI tools — from industry-standard AI training practices on the one hand, while on the other hand accusing Midjourney of wrongdoing for the same,” the filing states.
- The company contends that creating images similar to copyrighted works isn’t automatically infringement, noting “any number of legitimate, noninfringing grounds to create images incorporating characters from popular culture,” including “non-commercial fan art, experimentation and ideation, and social commentary and criticism.”
- “Plaintiffs seek to stifle them all,” Midjourney’s lawyers wrote.
Legal representation: Midjourney is represented by Cooley LLP attorneys Bobby Ghajar, John Paul Oleksiuk, Judd Lauter, and Ellie Dupler.
- Ghajar also represents Meta in a separate case where authors have accused the company of illegally training its AI language model on their books.
- The company points to its terms of service, which require users to avoid infringing on intellectual property rights.
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