Disney and Universal lawsuit may be killing blow in AI copyright wars

Midjourney's tool, which creates images from text prompts, has 20 million users on its Discord server, where users type their inputs. In the lawsuit, the two movie-making giants share examples in which Midjourney is able to create images that uncannily resemble characters each company owns the rights to, such as the Minions, controlled by Universal, or the Lion King, owned by Disney. They also say Midjourney "ignored" their attempts to remediate the issue prior to taking legal action. Midjourney did not immediately respond to New Scientist's request for comment. The lawsuit has been welcomed by Ed Newton-Rex at Fairly Trained, a non-profit organisation that promotes fairer training practices for AI companies.