Disney and Universal Sue A.I. Firm for Copyright Infringement
Link to the article without the paywall
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/business/media/disney-universal-midjourney-ai.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.zip234
Comments36https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/business/media/disney-universal-midjourney-ai.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.zip
Disney isn't fighting for the little guy. They will still agressively use it to cull their own workforce. They want to control who can use it and don't want to compete against an indie animation scene.
This is corporate AI against open source AI.
Show me where I can download Midjourneys full model to run it locally and then we can agree to call it "open weights". Unless their base model and training data is also available, it's not open source.
These lawsuits set precedents. The laws will apply to midjourney as much as the open source, but the big players can buy the data.
It’s hard to feel sympathetic for Disney when they have more money than god.
In this case that's exactly what we need, someone with more money than god that can set precedents to protect the authors and artists that need it the most.
Disney is not going to protect authors and artists.
Correct. If anything, Disney is only fighting somebody else exploiting their employees so they can protect their right to exploit their employees.
American law works on precedents, this will be one
It doesn’t matter it was the evil empire getting that result
It does if it only benefits evil empires. The open source tools can't afford the price which only leaves the big AI companies that can and Disney who holds the data.
All this will do is add a fat price tag and censorship. Artists will not get paid and AI will not go away, the jobs will still be lost. It's the worst of both worlds.
So you really think now that Meta pirated all possible books (and argued they just didn’t seed them) the normal guys will get the same treatment?
Has someone sued Meta for that and has the court given a precedent?
If patents did not exist, many people would be surprised that their medical expenses would be cheaper.
That’s just one side of the coin.
I understand. That being said, my feelings remain mixed.
Paraphrasing Churchill, if AI companies were plagiarizing hell's works I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil.
And they just fired Terry Moran for the mildest tweet critical of the current administration imaginable.
I legit just cancelled my Disney+/hulu/espn account over it.
Hey man, the only people who can challenge the new oligarchs, so it seems, are the old oligarchs. And I say: let them fight!
everyone has more money than god though
There are solid gold or platinum asteroids out there, but God only gave us the resources of earth in the bible.
So God is definitely richer than Disney.
Nvidia can do a hostile takeover of Disney if they wanted to
You know the timeline is absolutely fucking fucked when you want Disney to win a copyright lawsuit. 😬
We actually don't. This won't kill AI, this will mean only conglomerates like Disney can own AI.
It's just ironic because Disney is directly responsible for why copyright is so fucked up now.
I don't see the irony. They perceive AI as a loop hole and need to squash it to keep their grip on things. If anybody can just prompt a movie in ten years, their business is dead. If a small group of indie animators can make a fully fledged movie, their business is dead.
They made it fucked up in their favor, this lawsuit is a continuation of that.
It seems like we're going back to the 90s.
When Microsoft wanted to destroy Linux, Another similar arc is coming. I wonder if there will be other Halloween docs.
This could be the first sign of AI bubble bursting.
More please
MORE!
Oh, I've been sued by Disney.
New York Times Sues Fediverse Commenter for Copyright Infringement
Lol
Very interesting time to be a lawyer.
I'd say do it more... generate more star wars media until Disney gives it up as a golden goose to milk. Doesn't matter if it's ai or whatever fuck disney...
It begins.
This is gonna be interesting. I really hope Disney wins. Then any artist can take this as a template to file their own lawsuits.
when disney wins there will be nothing left to sue, with the result that now the entertainment industry, which has the available training data, will also have the AI technology, and the only one who profits is disney - because in this situation all open source GenAI is fucked.