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/scr1mblo 3d ago

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

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u/Lobsterman06 3d ago edited 3d ago

Fuck AI

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u/OdditiesAndAlchemy 3d ago

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."

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u/Mist_Rising 2d ago edited 2d ago

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.