Overview

• The complaint filed in California includes AI-generated images from films such as Cars, Toy Story, Shrek, The Avengers and series like The Simpsons.
• Disney and Universal allege that Midjourney ignored formal cease-and-desist demands and continued distributing unlicensed character depictions to millions of users.
• Both studios describe the platform as profiting from a “bottomless pit of plagiarism” by promoting its ability to recreate copyrighted figures.
• This lawsuit marks the first copyright action by major Hollywood studios targeting an AI image generator and may prompt similar suits against other AI firms.
• Legal experts say the court’s ruling could redefine fair use boundaries for AI training data and influence future regulation of content-generation tools.