The AI IP War for Movies, and the Startups in the Mix

This week, Disney and Universal filed a sweeping lawsuit against Midjourney, one of the most prominent AI image-generation companies, accusing it of building a business on stolen IP. "Piracy is piracy," said Horacio Gutierrez, Disney’s chief legal officer. “The fact that it’s done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing.” Midjourney, with its 20 million users, offers an image service that allows anyone to generate visuals using prompts. Disney and Universal allege that it functions as a “virtual vending machine” for pirated IP conjured without licensing or permission. This isn’t Hollywood’s first brush with AI anxiety. Writers and actors unions have long warned of synthetic voices, digital replicas, and AI-generated scripts. But this lawsuit marks the fi