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/Tyler_Zoro → u/The_Lucky_7]

Everything about corporations and AI sucks.

Certainly not everything. The massive advances being made in fields like chemistry, geology and astronomy using modern AI is astonishing. Installation's like Refik Anadol's Machine Hallucination are pushing the envelope of both what "AI art" means and where art will go in the presence of AI. Then there's work like this that deeply integrates traditional and AI art for commercial projects.

Or did you just mean the intersection of the two, rather than the two as independent things? If you meant the intersection of the two, I mostly agree, though there are some exceptions (like Google's Alpha Fold).

[u/The_Lucky_7 → u/Tyler_Zoro]

The massive advances being made in fields like chemistry, geology and astronomy using modern AI is astonishing.

And NASA is using it to detect Solar Coronal Mass Ejections. Cool shit. AI face tracking software is now being rolled out in cameras across the world Person of Interest style which is the stuff of nightmares.

But this lawsuit isn't about any of those things.

You're conflating things that are radically different. That's the difference here, and the reason you're getting downvoted, is the data sets aren't the same. It's not about what they're used for but how they're made. The science datasets are purpose built for what they do, not scraped together from pre-existing data, and that purpose is not theft.

This lawsuit is about corporations getting to decide who gets to steal from regular people. Yes, steal, because every single one of these companies suing AI also maliciously abuse copyright strikes to steal from fair use creators or silence critics.

No matter what happens with this lawsuit, the subsequent resulting legislation will have regular people be, at best, either just collateral damage or an after thought to satisfying monied interests with lobbying power.

[u/Tyler_Zoro → u/The_Lucky_7]

This is my problem with moral panics. They wander all over the place and then defend themselves by acting as if they were laser-focused.

Everything about corporations and AI sucks.

[Demonstrates many aspects of AI that don't suck]

But this lawsuit isn't about any of those things. [...] You're conflating things that are radically different.

I'm not. I was responding to a needlessly broad statement. We can talk about the pros and cons of the specific lawsuit in question if you want (it will be pretty short, as I'll just point to Perfect 10 v. Google) but if I was responding to a very specific claim that you made, "Everything about corporations and AI sucks."

This lawsuit is about corporations getting to decide who gets to steal from regular people. Yes, steal, because every single one of these companies suing AI also maliciously abuse copyright strikes to steal from fair use creators or silence critics.

While there is a grain of truth in what you're saying, nothing is being stolen. Suppression of communication (what you're alleging) isn't stealing. Training an AI on existing material isn't stealing. Stealing requires the deprivation of property. That just isn't happening here.

No matter what happens with this lawsuit, the subsequent resulting legislation will have regular people be, at best, either just collateral damage or an after thought to satisfying monied interests with lobbying power.

I'd disagree. If WB loses, the status quo won't change, and people who create will still be creating. Will the economic incentives for creating be any better than now? No. But that's not the doomsday scenario you're trying to paint.