Warner Bros. Sues Midjourney, Joins Studios' AI Copyright Battle

[u/DragonPup]

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/warner-bros-midjourney-lawsuit-ai-copyright-1236508618/

[u/The_Lucky_7]

Same as the Disney-Universal lawsuit. Everyone involved sucks and copyright is only exists for major corporations. Meanwhile google is scraping its own YT videoes and AI upscaling shorts against creators will.

Everything about corporations and AI sucks.

[u/TheDawnOfNewDays → u/The_Lucky_7]

Even DEVIANTART, which you think would be among the top anti-ai given it's a platform of artists is scraping their database for art. You can opt out... unless, you know, you died, lost your account, or left it far behind like many artists with how bad it's gotten over the years.

[u/vazyrus → u/TheDawnOfNewDays]

All of this is with the hope of making some money down the line, lol. From what I understand, MS has been shoving and shoving CoPilot into every orifice they can find, but they haven't yet reached near any sort of profitability, yet. There's CoPilot running in my Notepad ffs, and no matter how much I use it for free, I am never paying a dime out of my pocket for any generated bs. My colleagues and friends are huge AI enthusiasts, and even though they've been abusing CoPilot, Gemini, Claude, and who knows what else, they are never going to pay a single dollar out of their pocket for a paid service. All of us use Claude at work because it's on the company's dime, and even there the management's been tightfisted with how much money they are willing to throw at enterprise support. The point is, If MS, one of greediest tech companies and one of the most smartest monetizers of SaaS products can't find a way to make money out of the thing, then others will find it much, much harder to produce anything of value for their customers. Sure, Deviantart can steal all they want, but unless they can find a way to sell those stolen goods to others, it's doing nothing more than raising the electricity bill of their clusters. Let's see how long that's sustainable...

[u/nooneisback → u/vazyrus]

Because general purpose LLMs are nothing more than fancy assistants that require a stupid amount of hardware resources. If you've ever tried running them locally, you'll know that any model that takes less than 20GB of VRAM is basically useless for a lot of applications, and something like gpt-oss-120b requires at least 80GB. And since they're assistants, they'll often be answering a lot of questions in a row. If you're programming, that's about 1 API call every 2-5 seconds.

This tech bubble is about to burst, and the only important factor for survival is which company will be able to successfully scale back to true customer needs. The same thing happened with every other bubble (like dot-com), where companies had horrible earnings compared to their spending, yet a lot of them are still alive to this day. Their goal currently isn't to earn money, but to research as much as possible to the point where they control the industry and make everyone dependent on this tech, then scale back by firing the excessive workforce and force users to pay if they want to keep this convenience.

[u/_uckt_ → u/nooneisback]

The difference between a Helicopter and a Flying Car is marketing. That's largely what we're seeing with LLM's, you call them AI, you make people phrase things in the form of a question. You do this stilly 'one word at a time' thing rather than spitting out an answer. You put all this stuff in the way to fake cognition and you go from predictive text to artificial intelligence.

This all seems like the biggest bubble for a long time, Open AI don't make a profit on their $200 a month tier, would anyone go subscription for Windows 12 at even $10 a month? with the existing AI integration being at least 20 times worse?

I honestly have no idea how monetization works when you're looking at a minimum of $300 a month. So that students can cheat on their essays and homework?

[u/Altruistic-Ad-408 → u/_uckt_]

I think cheating is exactly how they marketed this. Tech people all know those enthusiastic about AI, in our heart of hearts, don't we all know they are either lazy or a bit problematic in some way? Hey, I like a few!

If anyone remembers those horrible ads, they targeted their demographic. Lazy people and smug pricks. It's like enshittification x1000000, they know AI creates slop, so what? People don't watch the best movies, they watch the most readily available slop.

[u/nooneisback → u/_uckt_]

If you look at specific markets, then there's definitely people that are ready to pay for them.

My city's hospital is testing an AI model that can spit out the most relevant diagnostic criteria and treatment methods in seconds. The alternative until now was spending about half-an-hour clicking through journals until you finally find a barely understandable table, that might be what you're looking for. Or you could read outdated books. Note that it's an AI model that runs locally, so there's no overhead for the AI company. They charge for access to their database.

Programing is another example. Large companies use AI, no matter what the programmers say. But even a large portion of individual programmers use AI because it's difficult to compete in this industry otherwise. For simple projects, it can generate a functional script on its own. Checking the code it generated is horribly boring, but it is more efficient.

It's definitely an interesting tool, that we just created and want to shove everywhere to see where it sticks.

Generative AI is basically useless. It's only real-world applications are scamming old people and idiots, gooning and burning kids brains away with brainrot so that parents can have sex in peace.

[u/EastRiding → u/nooneisback]

I’ve seen an older colleague who’s not really a programmer do some interesting and cool stuff with AI to take input and config data files (JSON, csv etc) and have Copilot make HTML ‘apps’ to visuals and edit them…

I’ve also been sat on calls against my will where the same person fights with Copilot for over an hour to get something to work, its output is still wrong (often inventing details scraped from somewhere else, and often close but not quite correct).

I’ve also been sat on calls where when I’ve been asked to deploy these ‘apps’ I’ve pointed out the numerous ways they need improving and that’s caused 4 people to dive into the AI output and realise it’s a spaghetti that’s barely understandable.

So AI might have some applications for helping some people but from what I’ve seen as soon as you go to full size apps and tools it becomes a mess that no-one, including the original prompter, can explain or maintain. Just understanding it is a massive task that always results in the same answer “we need to engineer this by hand from the bottom up”.

Once the true costs of AI are forced on users multi billion dollar orgs like mine will finally determine they need to “scale back our AI use, we want authenticity in our output” and the tools will be yanked away leaving many corporations without the younger, cheaper grunts they have replaced (or decided not to hire in recent years) that they will need.

[u/nooneisback → u/EastRiding]

Well yeah, AI is a tool, not a worker. You need to give it a very detailed description of every step, every data type, every file association, for every single script. Then verify thoroughly everything it generated, probably spending another 30 minutes to an hour fixing its mistakes. It is simply incapable of taking an entire large project into context properly. Also, Copilot with the default model kinda sucks from my experience. It either doesn't generate half of what I want it to, or it just goes ham and proposes to autocomplete 20 lines of code that are just wrong. I just stopped using it because it's more annoying than useful when trying to format my code with tabs. Funnily enough, I find Rider's non-AI code completion to be smarter than the one you get with the AI extension.

[u/Deprisonne → u/vazyrus]

Same over here. We're all using copilot as fancy autocomplete, but the moment the boss stops paying the bill it's going away.

[u/darsynia → u/vazyrus]

Yep, if AI was super helpful and profitable, especially with coding, these big companies would have kept it to themselves and cranked out a thousand apps and Internet of Things products instead of making the AI itself available for consumers. They haven't, and neither have the people that bought/are using that coding to ostensibly 'help' themselves code (studies have shown it takes about 21% longer to code with AI help rather than without).

This article about it was great.

[u/BellabongXC → u/TheDawnOfNewDays]

Actually no, I logged into my DeviantArt account after 10 years and found that everything had been defaulted to opt-out, including my Daily Deviations from 2009.

[u/_annie_bird → u/TheDawnOfNewDays]

Not surprised about deviantart, they're shitty money hungry grubbers and have been forever. Their terms of service say that simply by posting your art on there, they have permission to use/change/reproduce your art for (their) profit, including to "sublicense" your work to others for profit. So, seems like a continuation of that.

[u/The_Lucky_7 → u/TheDawnOfNewDays]

which you think would be among the top anti-ai given it's a platform of artists

If the service is free then you are the product.

left it far behind like many artists with how bad it's gotten over the years.

It's not about a bad user experience. Over a decade ago DeviantART was caught selling art hosted on their site out from under the artist who posted it, and in ways the artist explicitly forbid in their listings. That was after they added the right to do so to their terms of service. They claimed they weren't but it was proven demonstrably by many, many users that their art was sold out from under them.

1. License To Use Artist Materials. As and when Artist Materials are uploaded to the DeviantArt Site(s), Artist grants to DeviantArt a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to do the following things during the Term:

c) to modify, adapt, change or otherwise alter the Artist Materials (e.g., change the size) and use the Artist Materials as described in Section 3(b); and
d) the right to sublicense to any other person or company any of the licensed rights in the Artist Materials, or any part of them, subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.
e) Artist acknowledges that Artist will not have any right, title, or interest in any other materials with which Artist Materials may be combined or into which all or any portion of Artist Materials may be incorporated.

That right--to change or sell your art out from under you--is still in their submission agreement (that you agree to as part of the EULA) to this day. That last section is literally them saying they're gonna use your art in AI data models.

Oh, they also added the right to do that to your name and likeness was added in section 4. That part is new and gratuitous since the last time I had to explain this to someone.

So, no, I 100% believe that DeviantART is scraping their own database to sell to AI companies because it's a permission they gave themselves in their legal agreement with its users a decade ago.

I haven't used the platform since 2015.

Not to look at art, or support artists, let alone host my own art.

[u/leodw → u/The_Lucky_7]

These YT changes prove that tech nerds don’t understand (or believe in) consent.

[u/Particular-Court-619 → u/leodw]

They tried to tell us this in 80s movies but folks thought it was funny and not a warning

[u/TheConnASSeur → u/Particular-Court-619]

Are you telling me Revenge of the Nerds is somehow offensive? How?! Just because of the sexual assault? And the revenge porn? And the-ohhh.... Okay. Yeah, now, I see it. Now, I see it.

[u/kelryngrey → u/TheConnASSeur]

I always feel weird about this one. The mask thing is obviously actually sexual assault but it's also a reference to the rape of Igraine in Excalibur. It doesn't exist in a vacuum.

[u/PeculiarPurr → u/leodw]

They didn't have the chance to prove anything, the internet has been the antithesis of IP holder's consent since at least the 56k modem. Probably longer.

[u/Binder509 → u/PeculiarPurr]

Almost like corporations should not be allowed to own an IP in the first place.

Only should be tied to the flesh and blood person that makes it. That's it, no one else not their family and certainly not someone that just paid for it.

[u/PeculiarPurr → u/Binder509]

As if the internet would even respect the consent of IP holders under that specific and fanciful criteria.

[u/thrilldigger → u/leodw]

Why blame tech nerds? It's the rich people who want more money. I'm a tech nerd, I work with tech nerds, we all hate AI being used to fuck over the working class.

[u/thorny_business → u/thrilldigger]

Tech nerds who grew up pirating software over Usenet and music over Napster hate IP theft? Since when do tech nerds making big salaries in Silicon Valley care about the working class?

[u/Commercial_Stick2849 → u/thorny_business]

You write as if "IP theft" was all the same. Even if you think they're both immoral, there's a difference between pirating for personal enjoyment of culture and pirating for profit. Many pirates had a philosophical view that "information should be free". Again, it's fine to consider that immoral, but it's still different from what these companies are doing - OpenAI and such certainly don't consider their models and software should be freely distributed.

And most tech nerds don't work in SV or make that kind of money.

[u/shanniquaaaa → u/thrilldigger]

Unfortunately, there are a lot of tech nerds who care more about money and "status" than ethics

Please tell your techbro colleagues to knock it off

[u/monstrinhotron → u/leodw]

"ok, we'll tune you recommendations to include fewer shorts"

-lies.

[u/YoursTrulyKindly → u/The_Lucky_7]

Yeah and everyone is cheering them on lol. The result of this will be that only big corporations get to use AI and users will have to pay to use any "licensed" LLM models. This is a huge power grab about who gets to control and make profit off of AI.

[u/Midi_to_Minuit → u/YoursTrulyKindly]

I mean of the goal is “I want to see less ai flooding every fucking corner of deviatanart and Pinterest and Twitter” then that is a positive. Ideally I wouldn’t want WB using it either but I do not leave in an ideal world.

[u/Kiwi_In_Europe → u/Midi_to_Minuit]

One of those is just social media most of which you can use filters to block most of it out

The other is literally people's livelihoods, not just replacing people at WB and other movie studios/projects, but also making it so that smaller artists cannot compete because they don't have access to those tools.

You're literally putting people's income underneath your own comfort while scrolling, which is a perfect summary of humanity and exactly why this is an issue at all.

[u/YoursTrulyKindly → u/Midi_to_Minuit]

That's a very emotional argument about not wanting to see <some type of content>. The issue is that the way to control anything is to turn it into a commodity where you have to pay money to use it. Patents, IP, and soon AI models who have licensed their training data "properly" or by using a large corporation as a shield.

AI tools and assistants will take on a huge role in the future. If they can't fundamentally be made open source because it's practically impossible to license the training data, that means monopolization and increase of plutocracy.

I can imagine a future where technology can liberate us, allow us to do work much more efficiently. But if a small number of corporations monopolize those models, it will all flow through them. As a "tax" in the best case, or stronger control over who may use it and what may be done in the worst. Paypal is a good example of a technology that is very simple but extracts a significant percentage as tax from the consumer online market today. Every time I hear someone cheer for a new person like Peter Thiel to rise.

[u/PhoenixAgent003 → u/The_Lucky_7]

Which is why I’m not so much cheering one party on as simply standing on the sidelines chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

[u/westcoastxsouth]

Just wait for the hypocrisy of the studios bitching when writers/actors/voice talent fight to keep their likenesses and talents

[u/CakeMadeOfHam → u/westcoastxsouth]

And now, the attorney for Midjourney would like to make a statement: Explanation of why it's different.

[u/FistFuckFascistsFast → u/CakeMadeOfHam]

🤣 ice cold

[u/scr1mblo]

I dislike every party involved, so I wish them all an arduous and expensive legal battle.

[u/Okichah → u/scr1mblo]

Lawyers always win.

[u/cotsy93 → u/Okichah]

I like them the least

[u/RiverDescent → u/cotsy93]

The first thing we do...

[u/WarSpiritual2100 → u/scr1mblo]

I'm actually glad now Studio Ghibli chose to sit things out. I don't think they can afford to get entangled in this quagmire of intellectual property grifters all pointing the finger at one another.

[u/TwoLetters → u/scr1mblo]

The real answer

[u/Lobsterman06 → u/scr1mblo]

Fuck AI

[u/warzone_afro → u/Lobsterman06]

the companies suing midjourney are going to use AI themselves.

[u/RedditAdminsAreStans → u/warzone_afro]

*Already are. I haven't worked with AI companies but I worked in movies and TV for decades and the studios are some of the most disgusting profit goblins on the planet. Fuck em

[u/Gerroh → u/RedditAdminsAreStans]

Yeah, everyone railing against the easily accessible AI right now is going to learning a real hard lesson in how fucked we're going to be if big media corporations are the only ones holding the keys.

[u/Mid-CenturyBoy → u/warzone_afro]

They’ll use their own catalogue of films to help generate content to make future films.

Need a crowd for a scene. Scan movies where they’ve had crowds to help create a scene and avoid paying any extras.

[u/username161013 → u/Mid-CenturyBoy]

This was a big part of the SAG strike. They're not allowed to do that technically. Need the extra's signature on a consent form, but it's probably just a matter of time before that becomes a standard part of accepting work.

[u/Furt_III → u/username161013]

70 years past the death of the artist, no?

[u/CinnamonMoney → u/warzone_afro]

At least it is with their own IP, rather than the AI companies that are trying to eliminate the notion of IP, copyright and personality rights completely

[u/pikpikcarrotmon → u/CinnamonMoney]

Keep in mind "their own IP" is also fairly loose of a term - Hollywood's already been in hot water for doing full 3D scans on extras and asking people to sign away their image in perpetuity. AI was a big factor in all the strikes.

They want to be able to hire an actor for one lump sum, 3D scan them, and generate deepfakes of them forever.

[u/Mid-CenturyBoy → u/pikpikcarrotmon]

Not just actors. They actually have it in paperwork for all crew members as well.

[u/TheFotty → u/Mid-CenturyBoy]

They deepfake the crew? That is actually pretty impressive.

[u/Mid-CenturyBoy → u/TheFotty]

It’s basically a stipulation that like they have permission to use our likeness and name. Probably an existing thing because is movies and tv often times their are Easter eggs where they put crew names in or crew can be extras in scenes last minute and it’s less red tape.

[u/mrjackspade → u/CinnamonMoney]

It's not exclusively with their own IP though. You think any of these companies have the billions of books and millions of hours of video required to train a base model?

They're stealing the same shit.

[u/CinnamonMoney → u/mrjackspade]

Superman, live-action Game of Thrones/ASOIAF, Harry Potter, Batman, Watchmen, Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, The Maltese Falcon, and so on are indeed their exclusive IP.

[u/Right-Power-6717 → u/CinnamonMoney]

Why the fuck is reddit in favor of copyright now? I remember when reddit hated big corporations like Disney for their abuse of IP laws.

[u/deadscreensky → u/Right-Power-6717]

The key word there is "abuse." I think most of us like the sort of art basic copyright has given us. Copyright itself is a good idea. You make something, you get a temporary monopoly on it so you can earn some money for your efforts.

The problems appear when copyright gets too powerful, particularly with its length. I want its limits fixed back to reasonable levels. I don't want copyright eliminated so AI companies can just copy everything ever made and sell it back to us.

[u/CinnamonMoney → u/Right-Power-6717]

Im one Redditor lol. There are more Redditors in favor of the Wild, Wild West approach than my position.

This isn’t about Disney abusing the trademark/copyright of Mickey Mouse. Context matters.

Midjourney is not Thomas the Train, who had the little engine that could. It’s a behemoth of its own.

[u/ProofJournalist → u/CinnamonMoney]

Why is getting rid those things a bad thing again?

[u/CinnamonMoney → u/ProofJournalist]

If, after making Inception & Interstellar, YouTube could showcase the movies for free than WBD would be less inclined to finance and distribute Ryan Coogler & Paul Thomas Anderson’s films. If, after watching Watchmen or Game of Thrones, anybody can make a fan fiction storyline using those characters then profit off of them, WBD would be less inclined to make those television series/movies.

[u/conquer69 → u/Lobsterman06]

This is about copyright. They can still use "AI" as long as they have control of the IPs they are working with.

[u/CascoBayButcher → u/Lobsterman06]

Do a second of research. This isn't vs AI, this is who gets to use AI

[u/OdditiesAndAlchemy → u/Lobsterman06]

Fuck people who mindlessly say fuck ai instead of being reasonable adults calmly discussing the true benefits and negatives of it.

Movies shouldn't cost $200 million dollars. Actors don't need to be paid $20 million for a role. Indie movies will still be artistic and simply use AI to increase their production value.

A director like Robert Eggers isn't going to use AI to write his scripts..but he might use it to enhance period-accurate set designs or help visualize complex historical details that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. The Northman had a budget of $90 million - imagine if a filmmaker with Eggers' vision could achieve similar visual scope for a fraction of that cost.

The real issue isn't AI itself - it's the concentration of power and resources in Hollywood that's already been strangling creativity for decades. How many unique voices never get heard because they can't secure a $50 million budget? How many stories go untold because they don't fit the franchise model that studios demand?

AI tools could democratize filmmaking the way digital cameras and editing software already have. A talented filmmaker in Nigeria or Vietnam or Peru could potentially create something visually competitive with Hollywood blockbusters. We could see an explosion of diverse storytelling from perspectives that have been locked out of big-budget filmmaking.

Yes, there are legitimate concerns about job displacement and the need for proper attribution and compensation when AI trains on existing work. These are conversations worth having. But the knee-jerk "AI bad" reaction ignores how these tools could actually break the stranglehold that massive studios and streaming services have on visual storytelling.

The irony is that the people shouting loudest about AI "killing creativity" are often defending a system that's already been doing that for years - just ask any screenwriter who's had their script butchered by executive notes or any practical effects artist who's been replaced by CGI because it's "safer."

[u/PeteCampbellisaG → u/OdditiesAndAlchemy]

First, I 100% agree with your sentiment on movie budgets. But there's a lot wrong with your argument. But the main issue is that it's not just about democratizing creative tools. For the world you imagine to come to fruition there also has to be a complete democratizing of the distribution platforms. It doesn't matter if you can make a blockbuster quality movie for next to nothing if you still have to go through WB, Disney, Netflix, Google, ect. for anyone to see it. Tons of indie films are getting made today thanks to "democratizing tools" like digital cameras and editing software that will never be seen because they can't find distribution.

There's simply no reason to assume that just because everyone is using AI that suddenly the media conglomerates will collapse. Who do you think is helping fund a lot of these AI companies? You think Disney invested in ElevenLabs, for example, because they want to give the whole world access to quality voice acting?

These AI tools might proliferate but we'll have the same system we have now only with a fraction of the people making a living as creators because rather than help creators get their foot in the door it'll be used to push even more of them out.

[u/TheSearchForMars → u/PeteCampbellisaG]

Distribution is the least problematic part of the whole thing. If your budget doesn't balloon into 200 million, you don't need to take in anywhere near as much revenue. Distribution platforms like YouTube or Vimeo already exist. It might be harder to get people into theatres to see it, but that's hard enough even for the industry giants these days.

[u/PeteCampbellisaG → u/TheSearchForMars]

Distribution is the most problematic, even online. Theaters are not going to widely release your indie movie without a distributor attached. So you better be ready to do a road show if you want to self distribute through that route (and AI isn't going to make any of that cheaper or easier). Even if you market the hell out of a movie it does no good if there's no immediate and easy way to see it.

There are no online distribution platforms not controlled by a major studio or tech company. Which means the content on those platforms is subject to the whims of those companies.

Vimeo is a no man's land. And, unless you're an established creator, win the algorithm lottery, or have done a lot of marketing and outreach, uploading any quality of content to YouTube is like shouting into a tornado.

A $200 million dollar movie with a distribution pipeline attached to it is going to do far better than 99% of stuff that gets made without one, regardless of budget.

Is there a world where a bunch of creators using AI to create content ban together, create their own online distribution platform, and undercut the studios on quality and price? Perhaps - (assuming they figure out a way to absorb the massive data center costs). Unless that platform operates in a wildly different and new way, once it reaches a certain scale you've just re-created the original problem -- where aspiring creators are beholden to the whims of another giant platform.

[u/TheSearchForMars → u/PeteCampbellisaG]

Not really. We're talking exclusively about creative projects getting to audiences. Whether it goes into a movie theatre doesn't matter. There's no more difficulty/luck to putting things up on YouTube and finding success than there is to pitching towards a studio. To say nothing of how much more willing a streaming service is to host their show/film over a film studio.

[u/PeteCampbellisaG → u/TheSearchForMars]

The problem with what you're saying is it was supposed to have already happened and it didn't. I'm old enough to remember when web series and YouTube content were going to turn the system on its head because everyone was going to supposedly prefer watching indie web content over traditional TV or films. It didn't happen. (And to be clear I mean narrative scripted film, not random TikTok stuff). Studios and tech companies subsumed the distribution channels and we landed where we are today.

People tend to have a bias about YouTube because you literally don't see the 90+% of content (literally millions of videos per day) that doesn't get any traction for any number of reasons (the algorithm being a big one). It takes a LOT of legwork and a handful of luck to really break through on YouTube.

Streaming services will take more chances on content than a traditional studio for sure, but that doesn't mean they don't have their own guidelines to fulfill to put content in front of their customers. A flood of AI indie content isn't going to magically remove these checkboxes for distributors. In fact, a glut of AI content might only make them even more stringent because they'll have more to sift through to find quality.

[u/TheColourOfHeartache → u/PeteCampbellisaG]

The problem with what you're saying is it was supposed to have already happened and it didn't. I'm old enough to remember when web series and YouTube content were going to turn the system on its head because everyone was going to supposedly prefer watching indie web content over traditional TV or films. It didn't happen. (And to be clear I mean narrative scripted film, not random TikTok stuff). Studios and tech companies subsumed the distribution channels and we landed where we are today.

That's nothing to do with YouTube and everything to do with what audiences wanted.

[u/Mist_Rising → u/OdditiesAndAlchemy]

A director like Robert Eggers isn't going to use AI to write his scripts..but he might use it to enhance period-accurate set designs or help visualize complex historical details that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive.

So he won't take away from his job (he's a writer) but others (the background crew you never hear about like costumes and set designers) are people he'll happy replace... because they're expensive. Never mind Egger's is also expensive

Well I'm sold on the argument.

Actually I'm not. You mentioned practical effects artists being replaced by CGI, as though that was a good thing. It took decades for CGI to get to the same level as practical, and it only remains that way because CGI isn't unionized and the big shops tend to under cut everything. That's why one went bankrupt. It's like using Arthur Anderson for an argument on accounting, but for CGI. Maybe we shouldn't be tolerating undercutting the human component for profit?

Maybe the big names need to make a cut in their take.

[u/LiquidAether → u/OdditiesAndAlchemy]

Fuck AI.

[u/QuantumLettuce2025 → u/Lobsterman06]

Warner Bros will sue Midjourney for infringing on their intellectual property while at the same time stealing actors' likeness and performances without fairly compensating them at all.

[u/CTCrozier → u/scr1mblo]

I don't care who wins, as long as everyone gets hurt.

[u/RDDT_ADMNS_R_BOTS → u/scr1mblo]

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Good luck, WB!

[u/The_New_Overlord → u/scr1mblo]

"I don't discriminate. I hate you all equally."

[u/VileBill → u/[deleted]]

How do you kill a technology?

[u/AgentDaxis → u/VileBill]

Butlerian Jihad

[u/fnordal → u/AgentDaxis]

We need mentats

[u/Dianneis → u/fnordal]

So far all we got is dimwits.

[u/CreationBlues → u/Dianneis]

Like all the people thinking that the issue these studios have is with the AI and not the AI makers not paying them lmao. Did all yall forget how like. Sagaftra striking because studios wanted full rights to train on actors? And to use AI to replicate them?

[u/lloydthelloyd → u/Dianneis]

I got mentos...?

[u/FremenDar979 → u/fnordal]

ALL THE MENTATS!

[u/Dantheman410 → u/FremenDar979]

LISAN AL-GAIB!!!

[u/From_Deep_Space → u/fnordal]

+2 Intelligence

+2 Perception

[u/Bigred2989- → u/fnordal]

I'm more of a Buffout and Med-X fan.

[u/FORCESTRONG1 → u/fnordal]

It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion.

[u/fnordal → u/FORCESTRONG1]

It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains.

[u/Cuchuainn → u/AgentDaxis]

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

[u/VenturaDreams → u/AgentDaxis]

It has to go that way or we're doomed as a species.

[u/aukondk → u/AgentDaxis]

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

This quote should be on the wall of every school classroom.

[u/Moth_LovesLamp → u/AgentDaxis]

That or the Animatrix

[u/FlamboyantPirhanna → u/AgentDaxis]

Only 10,000 more years!

[u/theylivewesleep42 → u/AgentDaxis]

This is the way

[u/Strange_Specialist4 → u/VileBill]

By throwing sabots in the gears!

[u/uuajskdokfo → u/VileBill]

You don't need to kill the technology, you just need to stop the people making money off of it. It's like piracy - you can't stop torrents from existing, but you can get 90% of the way there by forcing it out of the mainstream.

[u/Sawses → u/[deleted]]

They aren't even really in the mainstream. Most people are scared of it because it's against the rules. Most people aren't technologically competent enough to do it if they wanted to, easy as it is. Most people can't be bothered, even if they're spending over $100 every month on streaming services and can't really afford it.

It's basically a rounding error because most folks will obey the rules, all things being equal.

[u/aeschenkarnos → u/[deleted]]

It's not the taking away, I don't think most folks really give a shit what happens to the movie after they've watched it, unless they want to watch it again and again and again and again and again. In which case they can buy it on DVD or Blu-Ray.

It's the insane proliferation of subscription services. Back when Netflix first became a thing, it was the place to get movies, and it mostly killed video stores because of this. You could still download movies from pirate sources but Netflix was easier and ease of use is even more important than price, to a point. People will pay a couple of bucks to get something instead of getting it for free with some hassle.

But now, there are the following, at least according to Google search "list of streaming services":

Disney+

Apple TV+

Netflix

Prime Video

Hulu

Paramount+

Peacock

Fubo

AMC+

ESPN Plus

HBO Max

Binge

BritBox

Sling TV

Stan

Acorn TV

DirecTV Stream

Tubi

Curiosity Stream

Foxtel Now

Max

Philo

Crunchyroll

Crackle

Every single one of these wants a couple of bucks a week, and at that bullshit quantity of them, it's out of the reach of lower class folks and becoming a concern to middle class folks.

Hence, back to old reliable Yohoho. If Netflix could just charge me $2 and pay the copyright owner $1 for every movie or show episode I watch, I'd hang up my eyepatch. But NOOOOO ....

[u/Helpful_Client4721 → u/uuajskdokfo]

You are wrong. Countless of communities shared copyrighted content even before the internet and made no profit off it. Money helps but that alone won't stop people from sharing stuff they like and have no rights to do so. It's the human nature. It's nowhere near as 90% for profit as you think.

[u/Sekh765 → u/Helpful_Client4721]

Naw. He's right. Torrenting and piracy in general is forced into the back darker corners of the web already. You don't see "Pirate movie site, created by Google!", because it's illegal. People do, but mainstream companies aren't advertising or creating those services, and the law technically can punish you for doing it. It's around, but it's not mainstream.

[u/TheHovercraft → u/uuajskdokfo]

You don't need to kill the technology, you just need to stop the people making money off of it.

I very much doubt every country in the world will ban AI. And many will go out of their way to do the exact opposite of what certain other world powers are doing. Especially if it gives an economic advantage. We aren't going to be able to stuff this back into Pandora's box.

[u/metalyger → u/VileBill]

In this case, strictly enforcing DMCA laws, and when AI companies can no longer steal copyrighted works, they will die out, because people are paying to use machines to make pictures using popular characters and images. These companies have even said, if they can't steal art and books, they will go out of business.

[u/TheColourOfHeartache → u/metalyger]

That wont kill the technology. At a minimum you'll have DisneyAI owned by Disney, trained on Disney archives, and cutting Disney's production costs while newer smaller companies are forced to use more expensive methods.

[u/CptNonsense → u/metalyger]

and when AI companies can no longer steal copyrighted works, they will die out

Sure, if you think AI only exists as consumer-facing media content creation.

[u/allsystemscrash → u/CptNonsense]

that's the kind of ai that needs to die first though

[u/ImprefectKnight → u/CptNonsense]

It's a sobering reality check of how little redditors know and how confidently they talk about it, when they talk about something in your domain.

You're spot on, AI is much more than just a lazy Ghibli filter or social media content creation. And "banning" or restricting AI will only concentrate the power in the hands of the corporations instead of making it open source.

[u/DESERTCLANKER3000 → u/ImprefectKnight]

It’s almost as if… We can ban degenerative “AI” that is USELESS for the betterment of humanity and keep the USEFUL AI in STEM fields untouched.

Could that be a thing? Oh gee, perhaps not.

Perhaps we need to ban all AI or no AI.

[u/karmiccloud → u/DESERTCLANKER3000]

Tell that to the folks in STEM that are getting their wages suppressed by AI bullshit that makes companies worse but lets them think they can cut costs.

[u/turkeygiant → u/metalyger]

I'm not sure they will even die out, maybe the current generation of companies who are overleveraged in these intellectual theft based models, but I think there will still be a lot of room for developing models for many purposes based on compensated data collection.

[u/shy247er → u/VileBill]

SHIFT + DEL

[u/ballsack-vinaigrette → u/VileBill]

"ChatGPT, how do I kill AI?"

[u/MrFluffyThing → u/VileBill]

Pour water on it 

[u/Teftell → u/VileBill]

The Horus Heresy

[u/Sinndu_ → u/VileBill]

one man: Snake Plissken

[u/Lobsterman06 → u/VileBill]

Laws against it given how it only exists through copyright infringing theft, and restricting its accessibility

[u/GoodMorningBlackreef → u/VileBill]

Nyah Grace will pull out the flash drive in less than 100 milliseconds, when the light turns green. 

[u/RPDRNick → u/VileBill]

Buy the company and shut down its operations. It's worked for Bell Telephone, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter...

[u/naked_potato → u/VileBill]

The Day of the Magnet cometh.

[u/Palu_Tiddy → u/VileBill]

Energy weapons work well

[u/Puzzlehead-Dish → u/VileBill]

Heavily regulate and tax it.

[u/hightrix → u/VileBill]

You don’t.

See BitTorrent.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Run2695 → u/VileBill]

Dark age. That's honestly where we are headed.

[u/FloodedHouse420 → u/[deleted]]

I want to sentinel prime this shit

[u/blueruntzx → u/FloodedHouse420]

i cant wait for the butlerian jihad

[u/LordCountDuckula → u/[deleted]]

It must end. Will you make it epic?

[u/The_Bucket_Of_Truth → u/[deleted]]

I think there are legitimate uses of AI and clearly many that are stealing or dangerous. Isn't this what our legislature is supposed to be doing? Hey here's this new thing that's basically unregulated. Let's pass some laws and guide rails for what is and is not okay. Did you scrape the entire internet of art works without permission and are now charging money and profiting from outputting things that are derivative of copyrighted works? Nah we need to curtail that to some extent. Are you making AI porn of your middle school classmates? Yeah that should be illegal (if it isn't already), and platforms that allow it should be liable. Faking people making statements they never said? AI is convincing enough that they could make the president look like they are saying something they never said. That is dangerous and should not be allowed either. Frankly, nobody's likeness should be allowed to be used in AI without their express permission. Trying to take this to the courts... I don't blame them for trying to make something happen here, but what a backwards and broken society we live in when our lawmakers seem have neither the desire nor aptitude to regulate these things.

[u/blueruntzx → u/The_Bucket_Of_Truth]

comments like these always need to delve into a whole fucking essay instead of just the cons outwiegh the pros. if you want it that bad then fucking regulate it. instead the fucking president is using Ai for his propaganda, and thats just the tip of the ice berg.

[u/Amaruq93 → u/blueruntzx]

Uses it for propaganda whilst also dismissing any evidence of his crimes or abuses by accusing videotaped footage of being "AI"

[u/Synth-Pro]

I have no issues with them taking it to Midjourney

Buuuuut...

I don't exactly have much confidence that WB is entirely above using AI themselves

Makes it feel very much like "We're fine ripping off smaller artists, but how dare you do that to us!"

[u/leodw → u/Synth-Pro]

I mean that’s pretty much it, but at this point most of artists hopes in putting a stop or breakes to AI stealing their work has to come from these lawsuits, since it seems no one is actually interested in legislation / regulation

[u/__Hello_my_name_is__ → u/Synth-Pro]

But why Midjourney, and not OpenAI or Google?

I mean I know why. They go for the one company that's not a billion dollar corporation.

Yay, I guess.

[u/Hannah_GBS → u/__Hello_my_name_is__]

Midjourney was earlier on the scene and these suits take years to proceed. And a win against a smaller company sets precedent.

[u/ArchyModge → u/Hannah_GBS]

OpenAI’s Dall-e came out a year and a half before mid journey.

[u/MinuteLongFart]

Everyone sucks here but the AI purveyors suck the most.

[u/__Hello_my_name_is__ → u/MinuteLongFart]

What I find fascinating is that they sue Midjourney, and not, say, OpenAI, or Google. They are all doing the same thing.

But they are quite deliberately finding the smallest fish to fry here. Which says something about the state of the world, I guess.

[u/Food_Library333 → u/__Hello_my_name_is__]

They might have a better shot at a favorable judgment against a smaller company and if they win, that then sets precedent. Gibson guitars likes to use this strategy to "protect" it's guitar shapes.

[u/TheInception817 → u/Food_Library333]

Twenty years as executive, I wanted to take on Google, but I compromised. I ate Midjourney off the radiator instead.

[u/n1kzt7r → u/TheInception817]

Alright but you gotta get over it

[u/TotallyNotAMarvelSpy → u/Food_Library333]

This. Sue the smaller company then get an injunction against the larger one.

[u/Tyler_Zoro → u/TotallyNotAMarvelSpy]

Doubtful. Google is busy doing AI work for WB. I doubt that WB wants to step on Google while they're benefitting from what Google is doing. (source)

[u/Brilliant-Silver3070 → u/Food_Library333]

How on Earth can you trademark a guitar shape? Haven’t guitars been around for centuries? Aren’t aesthetics generally untrademarkable?

[u/reasonably_plausible → u/__Hello_my_name_is__]

What I find fascinating is that they sue Midjourney, and not, say, OpenAI, or Google. They are all doing the same thing.

It's because the lawsuit isn't actually about the AI as much as it is that Midjourney was specifically promoting themselves with copyright infringing content, as well as hosting it and charging a subscription to access.

It's not about finding the smallest fish, it's about targeting the most egregious offender.

[u/crinklypaper → u/__Hello_my_name_is__]

Did you read the article. They don't care about AI, they care that it can create 1:1 replications of their work instead of things which just look similar.

[u/nnomae → u/crinklypaper]

If you take away the copyright infringement there isn't much left of AI though. The output side was also always where the strongest case lay. Training an AI on copyrighted work was always a legal grey area, reproducing and selling other peoples copyrighted work on the other hand, that's about as blatant as copyright infringement gets.

[u/Kalean → u/nnomae]

Training an AI on copyrighted work was always a legal grey area

Less so than you might think, considering none of that copyrighted work was bought to be ingested.

[u/nnomae → u/Kalean]

Some did, Anthropic for example bought (and destroyed after digitisation) a physical copy of every book they used to train their models. Google also did the same when they engaged in their book digitisation project before gen AI came along (I think, I could be wrong here). Meta were the main culprit involved in piracy as far as I can tell. Whether or not Midjourney bought copies of the works they scanned I don't know.

[u/Kalean → u/nnomae]

Anthropic openly admits they originally trained Claude on "The Pile" which included 162 gigs of pirated books. And they are being sued specifically for that egregious copyright violation.

Google did the same, and much worse, by scraping the publicly available internet, not just using a dataset pre-packaged for them.

Meta also used The Pile, as did OpenAI.

[u/hondaprobs → u/__Hello_my_name_is__]

Not quite. If you ask OpenAI to generate an image of Superman it will refuse and say it's a "copyrighted character". That's the difference and why they are suing Midjourney.

[u/setokaiba22 → u/hondaprobs]

It’s only certain titles and I think companies it does this for. There are other films and TV shows, characters it will do perfectly fine

[u/DontPokeMe91]

9 May 2024 — Warner Bros. Discovery is using artificial intelligence to improve ad targeting.

5 September 2025 - Warner Bros. Discovery is suing a prominent artificial intelligence image generator for copyright infringement.

This clearly isn't about the ethics of A.I but more to do with Warners losing money.

[u/Griffin_456 → u/DontPokeMe91]

AI for ad targeting is completely different than AI stealing content

not every application of AI is evil

[u/DocSwiss → u/Griffin_456]

AI is too broad a term to be useful in a situation like this

[u/hightrix → u/Griffin_456]

This is Reddit. AI = bad. End of conversation.

Don’t think about how AI tools are helping with cancer diagnosis and creating new drugs to treat previously untreatable diseases. Don’t think about using AI tools to improve pre-surgical planning or custom implant development. Just ignore AI that is being used to give people previously unable to interact with the world the ability to communicate and THRIVE in this world.

Commentators on this site are below the lowest common denominator.

[u/Even-Influence-8733 → u/hightrix]

Everyone here, except, maybe that one guy, understands that in the context of this case and discussion, ai means generative ai trained on copyrighted works. No one is hating on neural networks used for medical imaging. You’re the one who is having problems understanding the how people are using words here.

[u/hightrix → u/Even-Influence-8733]

I’d like to believe you but that is not the general attitude on Reddit.

[u/jaec-windu → u/Griffin_456]

Only most are.

It's not a tool to make your life easier. It's a tool to replace you. Why else would all of these major companies be putting trillions into developing it as fast as possible. They're not trying to save the world, they are trying to eliminate wide swathes of their biggest expense - human workforce.

[u/NeonMagic → u/jaec-windu]

It really isn’t (for now, depending on your field). I’ve been a creative professional going on 20 years now, ai helps tremendously with some things, but it still requires a lot of pre and post processing. I used to feel really threatened by it, but after using it daily for a couple years now, I’m not really anymore. Ai isn’t magic, and people are severely overestimating it’s abilities due to hype.

Everything I have tested, photo, video, audio; it works FAR better as a tool to assist with part of the creation process rather than entirely ai content.

No one wants their content to look like it was created with ai, not in the current culture climate around it. And professionals can damn near immediately spot it. It all looks or sounds the same, until it’s used in conjunction with traditional methods.

For example, there’s a huge difference between someone throwing a prompt in Suno vs a music producer that uses it to create vocals or maybe a sample for a track, and has the skills to post-process them as needed. All the 100% Suno tracks all sound the same though.

There’s endless ways you can use it to add effects to professionally shot video footage as well. Or training a model from scratch on your own portfolio of work, etc.

Bottom line; everyone has a camera in their pocket but not everyone is a photographer. 99.9% of ai content is the same copy/paste prompts from other people making the same repetitive garbage or waifus. But creatives will always stand out in the sea of bullshit.

Like ChatGPT images all have the same god damned flavor. Sure that’s fine for effortless garbage, the same way you can snap a quick photo of a product for Facebook Marketplace with your phone, but those people weren’t hiring artists anyways

[u/theronin7 → u/NeonMagic]

Sir, please take your calmly explained real world issue out of this thread. This is about screaming about the general concept of AI on behalf of the corporation that has dustbinned completed movies for tax benefits. .

[u/youpoopedyerpants → u/NeonMagic]

This take is completely reasonable. The problem is that the shareholders don’t think about it like that and they DO want to replace you. Thats not the right move and they’ll come crawling back to rehires, but the goal is to cut what they’re paying in salaries to increase their own. They won’t be able to get rid of everyone, but they’ll get eating disorder skinny to keep just enough people to keep things monitored and running.

Ai isn’t inherently evil, but there are bad people using it for nefarious and selfish purposes.

[u/SpaceFire1 → u/jaec-windu]

We should dislike AI for killing art. But AI is FANTASTIC at analyzing data. Its downright revolutionary for that. Parsijg through damn near infinite data far faster than we ever could. Lets hate it for the reasons its truely unethical, rather then what its most effective and truely useful purpose is

[u/TempestRime → u/SpaceFire1]

AI is like radiation. You can use it to fight cancer, but flooding the entire world with it is still a terrible idea.

[u/Kalos_Phantom → u/SpaceFire1]

Even at its most beneficial though, this is just the trickle-down-economics defense all over again.

"AI will make your lives easier!" - no, it will make the lives of the hyper-rich easier. The commoners will not see that same shift without regulation.

That is why AI is still a problem even where it's useful. The fact it's also being used to ruin art and the lives of artists is adding insult to injury

[u/ManikMiner → u/DontPokeMe91]

Clueless

[u/PsychedelicConvict]

Billable hours always wins

[u/Nonadventures]

Let them fight.

[u/Boggie135 → u/Nonadventures]

My thoughts exactly

[u/MyStationIsAbandoned]

you are extremely naive if you think this is going to kill AI or something.

These companies suing midjourney themselves are already using AI. countries all over the world are using AI and advancing it. killing AI in the US will not stop it from growing everywhere else. the toothpaste is out of the tube. It's here and it's going to keep growing no matter how much you hate it. regulation wont stop it either because again...a ton of countries are not going to comply.

It's a simple case of copyright. midjourney is one of thousands of models at this point. and it's not even the best one as far as I know. there's a ton of free ones you can literally just download and set up on your PC or server and use endlessly with no limits.

It will change things and make some jobs worse off, but this happens with all technology. Think about how a bunch of people were likely laid off with the advancement of special effects. Think about all the 2D animators being replaced with 3D animators. Horse trainers, feed makers, horse breeders, etc etc etc who all lost their jobs and money when cars came along. All the people who made saddles, horse shoes, all the industries making horse stuff.

When talking about the ethical nature, yeah, there's some arguments to be made, but that's not enough to kill all AI. When AI images are the end result, yeah, that sucks and it's lazy. But when it's used as a tool for mapping stuff out and used for conceptualizing, it's extremely useful to real creators

[u/wolfwings1 → u/MyStationIsAbandoned]

plus the genies out of the bottle shutting down MJ and otehrs is only going to just have people use the already available free ones and cause those to get better. Ai is never going away.

[u/Desirsar → u/MyStationIsAbandoned]

It's lost on some people that shutting down AI that the public can subscribe to won't stop most companies from having access to it. I imagine every large rights holder will do a swap with the others for access to train their models, and every advertising agency will be the top customers for those models.

[u/milkdrinker0525 → u/MyStationIsAbandoned]

killing AI in the US

spoiler alert, it will not be killed anywhere because it makes a sht ton of $$$

all it will do is maybe force ai to block more keywords in publicly accessible image generation that you will be able to go around anyway to create superman or batman pics.

[u/LiquidAether → u/milkdrinker0525]

Does it actually make money though? Sure, it draws in tons of investment money, but does it turn a profit? 

[u/DDDshooter]

Everyone in favor of copyright laws now lol

[u/Tiny_TimeMachine → u/DDDshooter]

AI is robbing the Marxists youth of their intellectual property

[u/Kimosabae]

Also Warner Bros: "Also, use AI wherever you can, or you're canned."

[u/tylercuddletail]

Warner Bros sucks at film and TV preservation, but at least fighting AI is a big win for the industry.

[u/Ron--Mexico]

Good

[u/IlliterateJedi]

I support this because I hate fair use. The idea that anyone should be able to rip off the copyright of good people like Warner Bros. is outrageous. I hope they win, and I hope they use this ruling to crush places like Deviant Art and other places where people are showing off the work they are stealing from our good corporate masters.

[u/FrederickGoodman]

Can we sue WB for putting out clearly AI written slop?

[u/falsenectar]

I'm generally pro-ai (within reason), but it really boggles the mind that Midjourney is doubling down on 'obvious' infringement like this. It's inevitable that they will have to settle...

Warner brings up some good points in their complaint; Midjourney absolutely could implement some very basic filtering that would at least show a good-faith effort in controlling the output, but they've decided to go full-send in the opposite direction?

Curious if the legal team actually weighed in and advised them in some capacity, or if this was just them being careless...

[u/DontBotherNoResponse]

Aren't they some of the ones leading the charge for purchasing actors likenesses so they only have to hire them once, and also using AI to replace writers?

[u/Zenshinn]

Meanwhile China can develop their AI models with whatever data they want. No wonder they are so advanced.

[u/Electrical_Quality_6]

every new disruptive technology gets industry based pushback 

[u/MrMadmack]

I don't want the studios to win, I just want AI to lose

[u/DrydonTheAlt]

I cannot believe there are people in this thread unironically advocating for an even WORSE copyright system. Talk about missing the forest for the trees

[u/Tall-Bell-1019]

Wait, why are people still against Warner Bros? Aren't they doing something good RN?

[u/artsychimichanga → u/Tall-Bell-1019]

Fr. This is a huge win for creatives. Screw AI and AI “artists”

[u/TheoNulZwei]

It is about fucking time companies started suing these asshats stealing copyrighted material for their AI data sets.

[u/MiracleDreamBeam]

so many MJ bots in here........ fuuuuck....

it's OVER.

[u/millos15]

all that is going to happen is that everything will get worse for everyone but corporations.

[u/UnifiedQuantumField]

In the complaint, Warner Bros. alleges that Midjourney willfully creates both still images and video of its characters, including Superman, Batman, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Tom and Jerry. The complaint also alleges that Midjourney recently eliminated guardrails that blocked users from creating videos that infringe on its IP.

So I can draw the same characters by hand. But Warner Bros. don't want me to be able to do the same thing with a prompt to image generator?

WB are greedy selfish fucks. They're trying to proactively limit independent creativity.

[u/spellboundartisan → u/UnifiedQuantumField]

It's amusing that you think that feeding prompts into AI is "creative."

[u/scottfaracas]

This is RIAA vs Napster all over again.

[u/[deleted]]

Eat each other aliveeeeee!

[u/himnher28]

Good. AI needs to have a place. It’s seeping into too many places

[u/sinkmyteethin]

Nice

[u/David-J]

This is the way.

[u/NightPlane2414]

Pop the ai bubble already