Midjourney seeks – Midjourney is asking a judge to force Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. to disclose more details about how they use generative AI—arguing the current discovery limits let the studios choose only evidence that supports their claims while blocking documents th
Midjourney is pushing back against a narrower court order in its legal fight with three Hollywood studios—calling it an uneven setup for what comes next.
Disney and Universal sued Midjourney last year, alleging copyright infringement. Their complaint centered on the idea that Midjourney’s image-generation models can create images of characters owned by the studios. including Bart Simpson and Darth Vader. A few months later, Warner Bros. added its own lawsuit.
Midjourney says training its models on images of copyrighted characters is allowed under fair use.
Now, the dispute has narrowed into something more procedural, but no less consequential: discovery. During this phase of the case, both sides are required to hand over documentation relevant to the claims and defenses. A judge has already ruled that the studios must provide information about their generative AI usage—but only when it led to “consumer-facing” videos and images.
In a new filing, Midjourney wants that limitation overturned. The startup argues the current rule is “unfair” because it lets the studios “cherry-pick only those documents they believe support their market harm claims while depriving Midjourney of documents that would support its defenses.”
Midjourney goes further, saying the documents the studios are holding back “are precisely those that would reveal whether, behind closed doors, they are doing exactly what they are suing Midjourney for doing.”
The startup points to a specific kind of work the studios may be doing out of public view. It argues that if studios are developing image-generating AI models “for internal use in storyboarding or ideating content for film or TV. ” that evidence would also show—at least to Midjourney—that using unlicensed copyrighted content as training material is an industry custom. including among the studios themselves.
Midjourney’s request isn’t limited to broad categories of internal AI activity. It also argues the studios should disclose all the prompts they used in Midjourney, along with the resulting outputs, rather than only producing the prompts that led to the allegedly infringing images.
The studios have disputed the motive behind the request. Their lead attorney. David Singer. previously characterized Midjourney’s demand as a “fishing expedition.” He also said the studios “do not seek to stop AI technology or even shut down Midjourney’s business.” In his view. the companies simply want Midjourney “to stop copying their movies and TV shows and to stop distributing. publicly displaying. publicly performing. and creating derivative works that include copies of [their] famous characters without authorization.”.
As the case heads deeper into discovery, the fight over what must be revealed—internal work versus consumer-facing output—may become a proxy battle over what each side believes courts need to see to judge fair use, copying, and intent.
Midjourney Disney Universal Warner Bros. fair use copyright AI discovery generative AI prompts prompts and outputs storyboarding Hollywood AI lawsuits