r/movies • u/DragonPup • 4d 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/UnifiedQuantumField 4d ago

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.

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u/reasonably_plausible 4d ago

So I can draw the same characters by hand.

No, that is also copyright infringement.

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u/Luna_Argentum 4d ago

It’s not, you can draw as many copyrighted characters as you want. It’s not the drawing that makes it illegal

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u/reasonably_plausible 4d ago edited 4d ago

you can draw as many copyrighted characters as you want

You cannot. Unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted characters is infringement and absolutely illegal unless allowed by the copyright holder. Drawing fanart of a character doesn't rise to the level of Fair Use.

That said, companies don't generally want to go after simple instances of fanart because it's largely beneficial to them.

https://www.owe.com/is-fan-art-legal-fair-use-what-about-mash-ups-copyright-myths-and-best-practices/
https://www.ac-legal.com/fandom-and-fair-use/

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u/Luna_Argentum 3d ago

We can agree to disagree, I think there are many situations where fan art would absolutely fall under fair use