“Let them fight”
viral: Midjourney fucking up human hands
spiral: Midjourney somehow fucking up Simpsons hands
https://bsky.app/profile/blakestacey.bsky.social/post/3lrep72zj4c23
When the complaint gets to saying what Midjourney advertises in their “explore” feature, it features dead-eyed waifu Elsa and body-pillow-ready topless Ariel.
lfg goat cmon cmon
Some of the comments on this topic remind me a bit of the days when people insisted that Google could only ever be the “good guy” because Google had been sued by big publishing companies in the past (and the big publishers didn’t look particularly good in some of these cases). So now, conversely, some people seem to assume that Disney must always be the only “bad guy” no matter what the other side does (and who else the other side had harmed besides Disney).
this is worse guy vs worse guy
This inspires the feeling of hating both sides of a fight and hoping that they do as much damage to each other as possible before it ends.
It is a bit like alien vs predator. Whoever wins, we lose. (And even that is owned by disney).
You want my take, this probably isn’t gonna injure Disney all that much - they’re one of the largest megacorps on the entire planet, and they’ve got damning evidence of infringement against Midjourney.
How much damage Midjourney’s gonna take (at least in the immediate term), I’m not sure. If they settle ASAP, they can probably limit the damage, but if they try and fight, they’ll probably be bankrupted by the case.
For you, the day Disney graced your independent research lab was the most important day of your life. But for Disney, it was Tuesday.
-M. Bison (the M stands for Mickey Mouse)
Not sure how I feel here. I hate overzealous legal departments and AI services, although admittedly Midjourney seems less scummy than some alternatives (like open AI). At least they’re not attacking someone who pirated Frozen 2 or made a fan game or something, like certain legal departments would.
oh yeah, “they’re making a bundle bootlegging our clearly in-copyright shit” is rather more clear cut
I guess the main question here is: Would their business model remain profitable even after licensing fees to Disney and possibly a lot of other copyright holders?
LLMs aren’t profitable even if they never had to pay a penny on license fees. The providers are losing money on every query, and can only be sustained by a firehose of VC money. They’re all hoping for a miracle.
Midjourney is also odd in that it didn’t take money from outside investors and it’s actually profitable selling monthly subscriptions.
From the article.
According to them at least.
Absolutely not.
What a deeply dishonorable lawsuit. The complaint is essentially that Disney and Universal deserve to be big powerful movie studios that employ and systematically disenfranchise “millions of” artists (p8).
Disney claims authorship over Darth Vader (Lucas) and Yoda (Oz), Elsa and Ariel (Andersen), folk characters Aladdin, Mulan, and Snow White; Lightning McQueen & Buzz Lightyear (Lasseter et al), Sully (Gerson & Stanton), Iron Man (Lee, Kirby, et al), and Homer Simpson (Groening). Disney not only did not design or produce any of these characters, but Disney purchased those rights. I will give Universal partial credit for not claiming to invent any of their infamous movie monsters, but they do claim to have created Shrek (Stieg). Still, this is some original-character-do-not-steal snottiness; these avaricious executives and attorneys appropriated art from artists and are claiming it as their own so that they can sue another appropriator.
Here is a sample of their attitude, p16 of the original complaint:
Disney’s copyright registrations for the entertainment properties in The Simpsons franchise encompass the central characters within.
See, they’re the original creator and designated benefactor, because they have Piece of Paper, signed by Government Authority, and therefore they are Owner. Who the fuck are Matt Groening or Tracey Ullman?
I will not contest Universal’s claim to Minions.
One weakness of the claim is that it’s not clear whether Midjourney infringes, Midjourney’s subscribers infringe, or Midjourney infringes when collaborating with its subscribers. It seems like they’re going to argue that Midjourney commits the infringing act, although p104 contains hedges that will allow Disney to argue either way. Another weakness is the insistence that Midjourney could filter infringing queries, but chooses not to; this is a standard part of amplifying damages in copyright claims but might not stand up under scrutiny since Midjourney can argue that it’s hard to e.g. tell the difference between infringing queries and parodic or satirical queries which infringe but are permitted by fair use. On the other hand, this lawsuit could be an attempt to open a new front in Disney’s long-standing attempt to eradicate fair use.
As usual, I’m not defending Midjourney, who I think stand on their own demerits. But I’m not ever going to suck Disney dick given what they’ve done to the animation community. I wish y’all would realize the folly of copyright already.
I have never in my life respected copyright and I and the things I like are too marginal to be threatened by Disney so destroying Midjourney counts as a win in my book.
I just hope that all the horses will have a fun time
I expect they think they can get a precedent here.
That’s true - the case is pretty clear-cut thanks to how much damning evidence they’ve managed to pull out. The old trend of using AI to make offensive shit in the Pixar style likely helped as well, but that’s speculation on my end.
Midjourney is also odd in that it didn’t take money from outside investors and it’s actually profitable selling monthly subscriptions. This is an AI company that is not a venture capital money bonfire, it’s an actual business.
I suspect Disney isn’t out to just shut Midjourney down. Disney’s goal is to gouge Midjourney for a settlement and a license.
In practice, I doubt Disney’s gonna get to shake much out of Midjourney before they end up going under - given that gen-AI is built to facilitate plagiarism and copyright infringement, a win for Disney here would lead to a de facto ban on generative AI.
Promise?
