Warner Bros Discovery Hits Midjourney With Lawsuit Over Batman, Superman & Other Iconic Characters

Warner Bros Discovery has filed a lawsuit against San Francisco-based AI company Midjourney, accusing it of using copyrighted characters such as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Bugs Bunny, and Scooby-Doo to train its image-generation service.

The complaint, filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, alleges that Midjourney enabled subscribers to generate high-quality, downloadable images of its characters “in every imaginable scene.”

This follows the Walt Disney Company and NBCUniversal filing similar lawsuits against Midjourney, accusing the company of rampant copyright infringement.

Warner Bros claims Midjourney knowingly engaged in copyright infringement, pointing to its decision to lift earlier restrictions that had prevented subscribers from generating videos from infringing images.

“Midjourney has made a calculated and profit-driven decision to offer zero protection for copyright owners,” the studio said in the filing.

The lawsuit seeks damages, disgorgement of profits, and an injunction against further use of its intellectual property.

Last month, AI startup Anthropic reached a resolution in a high-stakes class action lawsuit brought by prominent U.S. authors, marking one of the most significant settlements in the ongoing battle over AI copyright infringement.

The lawsuit alleged Anthropic downloaded as many as 7 million pirated books to train its large language models, exposing the company to catastrophic damages.