LOS ANGELES — Midjourney has filed a motion requesting Judge John Kronstadt to overturn a magistrate judge's June 15 ruling that limited discovery regarding the generative AI usage of Warner Bros., Disney, and Universal. The motion argues that the studios should disclose all instances of their generative AI usage, not just those that resulted in consumer-facing videos and images.

Warner Bros., Disney, and Universal previously sued Midjourney for alleged copyright infringement. Magistrate Judge Joel Richlin issued the ruling on June 15, which stated that the studios only needed to provide information about their generative AI usage when it led to consumer-facing videos and images. Midjourney contends that training its AI models on images of copyrighted characters falls under fair use.

Midjourney seeks the disclosure of the studios' AI business plans, research reports, training datasets, model weights, and board meeting presentations that pertain to AI. The company also argues that the studios should reveal all prompts used in Midjourney and the resulting outputs, beyond only those producing allegedly infringing images.

Attorney Bobby Ghajar stated, "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." Ghajar added, "If Plaintiffs are developing image-generating AI models — trained on unlicensed, third-party copyrighted data — for internal use in storyboarding or ideating content for film or TV, that evidence would equally demonstrate that it is an industry custom, even among the studios themselves, to download and train AI on unlicensed copyrighted content."

Attorney David Singer stated, "Plaintiffs do not seek to stop AI technology or even shut down Midjourney's business." Singer added, "Plaintiffs simply want Midjourney to stop copying their movies and TV shows and to stop distributing, publicly displaying, publicly performing, and creating derivative works that include copies of Plaintiffs' famous characters without authorization—the same rights any copyright holder would assert against any infringer, AI-powered or otherwise."