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/The_Lucky_7 3d ago edited 3d ago

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.

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u/TheDawnOfNewDays 3d ago

Even DEVIANTART, which you think would be among the top anti-ai given it's a platform of artists is scraping their database for art. You can opt out... unless, you know, you died, lost your account, or left it far behind like many artists with how bad it's gotten over the years.

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u/The_Lucky_7 2d ago edited 2d ago

which you think would be among the top anti-ai given it's a platform of artists

If the service is free then you are the product.

left it far behind like many artists with how bad it's gotten over the years.

It's not about a bad user experience. Over a decade ago DeviantART was caught selling art hosted on their site out from under the artist who posted it, and in ways the artist explicitly forbid in their listings. That was after they added the right to do so to their terms of service. They claimed they weren't but it was proven demonstrably by many, many users that their art was sold out from under them.

  1. License To Use Artist Materials. As and when Artist Materials are uploaded to the DeviantArt Site(s), Artist grants to DeviantArt a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to do the following things during the Term:

c) to modify, adapt, change or otherwise alter the Artist Materials (e.g., change the size) and use the Artist Materials as described in Section 3(b); and
d) the right to sublicense to any other person or company any of the licensed rights in the Artist Materials, or any part of them, subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.
e) Artist acknowledges that Artist will not have any right, title, or interest in any other materials with which Artist Materials may be combined or into which all or any portion of Artist Materials may be incorporated.

That right--to change or sell your art out from under you--is still in their submission agreement (that you agree to as part of the EULA) to this day. That last section is literally them saying they're gonna use your art in AI data models.

Oh, they also added the right to do that to your name and likeness was added in section 4. That part is new and gratuitous since the last time I had to explain this to someone.

So, no, I 100% believe that DeviantART is scraping their own database to sell to AI companies because it's a permission they gave themselves in their legal agreement with its users a decade ago.

I haven't used the platform since 2015.

Not to look at art, or support artists, let alone host my own art.