Midjourney is turning the tables on the Hollywood studios that sued it. The AI image generator is now asking Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, and Universal Studios to reveal how they use artificial intelligence in their own productions, and it wants that information submitted as court evidence. According to Engadget, Midjourney is pushing a federal court to overturn a magistrate judge’s order that largely shielded the studios from having to disclose that information.
The background: last year, the three studios filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Midjourney, claiming the tool can generate images of Superman, Batman, and other characters they own. Midjourney’s defense is that training AI on publicly available images is fair use, and that the studios are doing the exact same thing with their own AI models.
This puts both sides in an interesting position. The studios want to limit what they have to share. Midjourney wants everything.
Specifically, Midjourney is requesting:
- The studios’ AI business plans
- Internal research reports on AI
- Training datasets used for their models
- Model weights
- Board meeting presentations about AI strategy
In mid-June, a magistrate judge sided mostly with the studios, ruling that they only had to hand over details about “consumer-facing” AI applications. Midjourney is now asking the federal court to throw that ruling out.
The company’s legal argument is straightforward. If the studios are training their own AI models on copyrighted material, that directly weakens their case against Midjourney for doing the same thing. Attorney Bobby Ghajar put it plainly in the filing: “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.”
The “unclean hands” defense is a legal concept that basically says a party can’t sue someone for doing something they’re also doing themselves. It’s not a guaranteed win, but it’s a legitimate argument, and the evidence Midjourney is asking for could make or break it.
What makes this case worth watching is that it sits at the center of a much larger debate about copyright law and AI. Courts across the country are being asked to decide whether training AI on copyrighted works counts as infringement or fair use, and there’s no clear answer yet. The outcome here could set a precedent not just for Midjourney, but for every AI company that trains models on publicly available data.
Hollywood studios have been vocal about protecting their intellectual property from AI companies, while quietly building out their own AI tools for everything from visual effects to script analysis. If Midjourney gets the discovery it’s asking for, it could expose that contradiction in open court, which would be uncomfortable for the studios regardless of how the case ultimately goes.
The federal judge hasn’t ruled on Midjourney’s request yet. But however it goes, the decision will matter well beyond this one lawsuit.
