On June 11, 2025, Disney and Universal Pictures filed a lawsuit in federal court in California, accusing AI image generation company Midjourney of using their intellectual property to train AI models and generate infringing images featuring iconic characters from their franchises. This marks the first major legal dispute between Hollywood studios and an artificial intelligence company.

The lawsuit was brought by Disney Enterprises, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, Universal City Studios Productions, and DreamWorks Animation. The companies allege that Midjourney’s AI model used copyrighted content as training data, obtained through tools such as web crawlers. When subscribers enter prompts like “Darth Vader on a beach” or “Minions,” the platform generates and offers downloadable images that infringe upon their copyrights.

The complaint includes AI-generated images of characters such as Darth Vader, Ewoks, Stormtroopers, characters from How to Train Your Dragon, Minions, and Shrek as evidence of Midjourney’s ongoing copyright infringement. Disney and Universal also presented side-by-side comparisons of AI-generated images of characters like Yoda and Shrek with their original appearances, asserting that Midjourney actively showcases infringing content on its “Explore” page and has knowingly refused to implement technical copyright protection measures despite having the ability to do so.

Notably, while many media companies have opted to sign licensing agreements with firms like OpenAI, only a few—such as The New York Times—have pursued legal action to defend their rights. Midjourney was previously sued in 2023 by visual artists for copyright infringement, a case that is still pending.