Artificial Intelligence (AI) firm Midjourney are being sued by Disney and Universal over its image generator, which the two Hollywood giants maintain is a “bottomless pit of plagiarism”.

The two massive studios have adopted a stance which accuses Midjourney’s tool of making “innumerable” copies of characters that include the likes of the “Minions” from Despicable Me, “Darth Vader” from Star Wars and Frozen’s “Elsa”.

The entertainment industry finds itself in something of quandary, on one hand eager to make use of the AI technology, but at the same time greatly concerned that their creations could so easily be stolen.

In this case Midjourney’s image generator makes identical images from typed requests or prompts and appears to have pirated the libraries of the two Hollywood studios, making and distributing without permission.

Disney’s chief legal officer Horacio Gutierrez said: “We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity, but piracy is piracy, and the fact that it’s done by an AI company does not make it any less infringing”.

In the lawsuit filed in federal district court in Los Angeles, the studios gave numerous examples of Midjourney-generated images that also included Disney characters such as “Yoda” from Star Wars and Marvel’s “Spiderman”, “Iron Man” and “the Incredible Hulk”.

Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh said: “A lot of the images that Midjourney produces just seem to be copies of copyright characters that might be in new locations or with a new background. It doesn’t seem like they’re being transformed in a creative or imaginative way.”

His point being that there is a recognition or acceptance in copyright law which allows creativity to  build on other works, but crucially only if it actually adds something new, which seemingly Midjourney are failing to do.

On its website, the San Francisco-based startup refers to itself as “an independent research lab” and says it has only a “small self-funded team” with less than a dozen full-time staff.

Despite the vast difference in company size, Randy McCarthy, head of the IP Law Group at US law firm Hall Estill felt it was not cut and dried that the court would find in favour of the giant corporations.

He said: “No litigation is ever a slam dunk, and that is true for Disney and Universal in this case. There are several issues such as terms of service provisions by Midjourney, and basic fair use analysis, that will need to be sorted out by the court before we can determine the likely outcome”.

Not so long ago actors and writers shut down the entertainment industry hub with strikes demanding protections against new technology, but fast-forward two years and now AI is being used to de-age actors like Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford and the technology features more and more in TV, films and video games.