The copyright lawsuit that can’t stop getting messier
Midjourney’s legal strategy in its fight with Hollywood is pivoting. They want to turn it back around on the giants.
Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. are suing the AI image generation company. They allege it enables large-scale copyright infringement by generating images of their protected characters.
Midjourney, in turn, has doubled down on a defence built around “fair use”. With a more provocative argument: that the studios may be doing something very similar themselves.
Now that argument has shifted into a discovery battle.
In June, a magistrate judge limited what Midjourney can demand from the studios. Ruling that it can only access information tied to “consumer-facing” AI tools, not internal systems or experimental development work.
Midjourney isn’t satisfied with that line in the sand.
This week, it filed a motion asking the Judge to expand disclosure, arguing that the real story lies behind studio walls, in boardrooms, research labs, and internal AI pipelines.
“If Plaintiffs are doing the very thing they seek to punish, that evidence goes to the heart of Midjourney’s fair use and unclean hands defenses,” wrote Midjourney’s attorney
Translation: if Hollywood is using AI to storyboard, ideate, or generate content internally. Then it can’t really claim moral high ground when suing someone else for doing AI things at scale.
The studios, unsurprisingly, are not enthusiastic about handing over the keys.
Their lawyers have argued that Midjourney is trying to drag the case away from its core issue: Alleged unauthorised copying of copyrighted material used to train its models.
At stake is more than just one lawsuit. The outcome could determine how transparent entertainment giants must be about their own use of AI, and whether “fair use” ends up being a shield, a sword, or just another thing both sides are arguing over in court while the technology keeps moving faster than the law.
