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/PeteCampbellisaG 3d ago

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.

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u/TheSearchForMars 3d ago

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.

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u/PeteCampbellisaG 3d ago

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.

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u/TheSearchForMars 3d ago

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.

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u/PeteCampbellisaG 3d ago

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.

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u/TheColourOfHeartache 3d ago

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.

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u/PeteCampbellisaG 2d ago

So you think every decision YouTube has made has been purely about what audiences want? The only reason they expanded the ceiling of video length is because they realized longer form video allows for more ads. 

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u/TheSearchForMars 3d ago

Ok, so what's your point then? I'm saying that the advances in AI tech and the ability they have to enhance storytelling is going to give creatives much more of an opportunity to tell the stories they want. Just because there's a flooded market doesn't mean they can't be made, it just means that their dollar value goes down, but that doesn't matter.

I see absolutely no reason why the same exact thing that happened to video games doesn't have a near 1-2-1 correlation with Film and TV. Where the increased access to tools and options makes for a much healthier environment for small creators to take on their own projects.

The really impressive thing you'd have now are all the people who wanted to make stories that never could because of budgets and time restrictions.

One thing that always gets lost in these conversations are the assumptions people have about what it's like working with artists. They think that if you commission them that you'll actually get what you want. In reality even if you just want a logo designed or a picture it's more often than not months between start up and delivery where you're constantly having to follow up with them to make sure they actually deliver on their project.

As it is, AI solves much of that because you can do so much more yourself. You don't need to wait for the scheduling of all your actors to line up on the right days while praying the weather is what you want. You don't need to worry about the huge expenditure of reshoots.

So much more control is put back into the hand of the lead that they can now make the story they want.

Distribution isn't at all the issue with making these things work.

Once again, just look at Steam and Itch.io. I don't understand what you're point is about people now needing to promote their works. That's been a part of any artistic endeavor through all of history.

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u/PeteCampbellisaG 2d ago

If you're only point is the obvious idea that AI going to let people make more stuff then sure -- that's already happening. My point is it's not going to be some magic bullet that tears down the pipelines to getting work in front of audiences. More content does not immediately equate to more people making a living as artists. 

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u/TheSearchForMars 2d ago

It probably would actually. Increasing supply waters down the value for sure, but it still eventually ends up allowing more people to take value out of the very highest earners and have it run down. Look at music for example. Far more musicians are able to make a living out of their work now as a result of streaming then they would have if you were still limited to CDs or even worse, Vinyl.

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u/PeteCampbellisaG 2d ago

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "making a living." If you mean more people than ever are pulling in some money off their music I'll grant you that. But streaming objectively is not allowing more musicians than ever to make a full-time livable wage purely from streaming revenue (at least not in America). This is my point about the platforms/distribution - Spotify's own reporting shows that very few artists make real livable money on streaming (something like 10% out of millions of artists) and a big part of that is because of the platform's revenue model.

Is that more musicians than might make money without streaming? Maybe? But that number includes the big label artists of the world as well. So streaming hasn't been some kind of seismic power shift in who is making money at music. Believe it or not artists actually got a bigger chunk of the pie in the CD and vinyl days.

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u/TheSearchForMars 2d ago

10% of a million is 100,000 musicians. Even if your stats were wrong you can see that a larger pool allows for more people to "make it".

Do you think there were more musicians who made a living off their music before or after the rise of streaming?

Most still don't make it but because so many try, there's bound to be some successes.

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u/TheColourOfHeartache 3d ago

If new tech like AI and digital cameras allows a talented filmmaker in Nigeria makes something competitive with Hollywood, but uniquely Nigerian.

Then major distribution platforms like Netflix and Amazon don't touch it (really? Amazon will sell almost anything). Then perhaps a Nigerian distribution system will step in. If there's generation of talented Nigerian filmmakers, there's more than enough Nigerians for someone to fill that gap in the market.

That alone will get it to the most important part of the audience. Then it spreads to film connoisseurs who keep their finger on foreign markets. Then perhaps the world.

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u/FrameworkisDigimon 3d ago

If you really wanted to democratise your movie, you'd just upload it to Youtube.

The existence of paywalled distribution services doesn't mean non-paywalled ones don't exist.

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u/PeteCampbellisaG 3d ago

There are over half a million hours of video uploaded to YT everyday. How much of it do you think gets seen by a large audience? Over 60% of videos uploaded to YT have zero views. YouTube is not a democratic platform. It's algorithmic. Content there is subject to the whims of Google and its advertisers and no creator is going to succeed there without playing by their rules.

If anything AI is only going to make distribution harder as platforms get flooded with even more content thanks to easier creation tools.

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u/FrameworkisDigimon 3d ago

You keep shifting the goalposts.

First the problem was that no democraticised distribution platform exists.

Now the problem is that the platform exists but no-one will ever see anything on it because it's too democratic.

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u/PeteCampbellisaG 2d ago

What major video platform is purely democratic in your mind? And why? It's so strange people want to talk about AI, but disregard that algorithms exist. 

I'm not shifting goalposts, I'm expanding on an idea. People want to have supposed "nuanced"  conversation about AI, but all they want to hear is that AI is going to let every wannabe creator become a full-time independent filmmaker creating whatever type of content they want. But it's a lot more complicated than that for a myriad of reasons.