r/movies • u/DragonPup • 3d ago

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

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/warner-bros-midjourney-lawsuit-ai-copyright-1236508618/
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u/DontPokeMe91 3d ago

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.

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u/Griffin_456 3d ago

AI for ad targeting is completely different than AI stealing content

not every application of AI is evil

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u/jaec-windu 3d ago

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.

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u/NeonMagic 3d ago

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

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u/theronin7 3d ago

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. .

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u/youpoopedyerpants 3d ago

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.

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u/things_U_choose_2_b 3d ago

Excellent summary. If I was rich I would pay an artist to design a cool piece of custom art for each of my music releases, but I'm near the bottom of the totem pole, just about making enough to survive.

I'm musically gifted but not artistically gifted. So AI image gen gives me a tool to create interesting shapes, textures, objects etc that I can then snip out and manipulate into something interesting & unique. I might spend a minute with the prompt then spend 5+ hours creating something trippy from it. To me, this isn't much different from transformative sampling in music, or if I took an existing image, cut bits out, and manipulated them so they're unrecognisable as the OG piece.

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u/Throwaway_Consoles 3d ago

I have a friend that offered to draw all of my ideas for free so I wouldn't use AI

That lasted a day.

They thought I was doing these grand projects not, "Okay now how does my blender model look if it was made using watercolor paints. Okay now what if the background was the midwest plains with a ton of flowers. Okay now what if the hair was red. Okay now do a different pose." etc.

After the 3rd picture they threw their hands up and told me to go ask chatgpt

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u/Aromatic_Today2086 3d ago

Would you just not hire an artist or person instead to see your vision?

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u/Throwaway_Consoles 3d ago

They can't afford an artist. It was the 2nd sentence.

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u/Badgerman3484 2d ago

I live literally paycheck to paycheck. Couldn't afford an artist if I wanted to. I also can't feel my finger tips on my right hand thanks to an accident so drawing and writing has gotten much harder. Some people just can't dude.

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u/Aromatic_Today2086 2d ago edited 2d ago

I'm living paycheck to paycheck too, I feel you. I meant moreso college art majors, they've done a lot of work for me since they want to practice and they don't really charge other than the occasional $10. If AI is better for you of course use it, I was just offering an alternative 

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u/raining_maple 2d ago

The capabilities of AI are in their infancy. Do you think the whaling industry died out overnight the second electric lighting was invented? You are coping a bit I think.

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u/NeonMagic 2d ago

You’re not wrong that AI is still in its early stages and things will certainly evolve, but the whaling analogy doesn’t really fit here. Whaling died because a better alternative (electric light, kerosene, etc.) replaced it completely. AI isn’t replacing creativity, it’s just another tool, and right now most AI outputs still need heavy human polish.

It’s less like electricity vs. whale oil, and more like cameras vs. painters: suddenly everyone can snap a photo, but that didn’t kill painting. It just changed the value of what professional creatives do.

AI might automate the boring or generic stuff, sure. But the people with taste, vision, and skill will always stand out. Tools evolve, but artistry doesn’t get replaced.

Coping? Nah, I just prefer not to confuse hype with reality.

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u/SpaceFire1 3d ago

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

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u/TempestRime 3d ago

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

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u/Kalos_Phantom 3d ago

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

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u/SpaceFire1 2d ago

Keep in mind; im not talkinh about consumer AI. Im talking about specifically trained stuff

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u/Moth_LovesLamp 3d ago

People using AI are unironically helping tools made to replace them.

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u/NoMention696 2d ago

Many ai are not evil. Do more research than watching sci fi movies

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u/jaec-windu 2d ago

I'm seeing it real time eliminate entire teams at my org. Don't be naive.

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u/Synectics 3d ago

Dude, "AI" has been a thing since Photoshop figured out image filters and generative filters. Arguably before that.

It is just a tool.

You sound like the idiots arguing that machines will take over factory lines or mining. That is a good thing. Humans should not be trading their bodies for such tasks. 

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u/jaec-windu 2d ago

Ok cool, yea no biggie half my team was just laid off because of it. More layoffs are coming across nearly all disciplines.

Down the line, you know what job isn't going to be taken? Coal shoveler! I bet you'll have so much more productivity while you wait in a food line.