Midjourney is asking a federal court to overturn a judge's order that allowed Hollywood studios to withhold most information about how they use artificial intelligence. The AI image generator wants to see internal documents from Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, and Universal Studios, including training datasets, model weights, research reports, AI business plans, and board meeting presentations about AI.
The studios sued Midjourney last year, accusing it of copyright infringement for generating images of Superman, Batman, and other copyrighted characters. Midjourney has argued that training AI on publicly available images is fair use and that the studios themselves use similar training practices for their own AI models.
In mid-June, a magistrate judge allowed the studios to withhold most of that internal information and hand over only material related to consumer-facing AI applications. Midjourney is now challenging that ruling at the federal court level.
According to litigation publication Mealey's, the company's reasoning centers on its fair use defense. According to Engadget, Midjourney attorney Bobby Ghajar wrote that "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 argument that a party cannot seek relief from a court if they themselves have acted improperly in connection with the same matter. Midjourney is betting that showing the studios train their own models on copyrighted works would weaken the studios' legal standing.
The federal court's decision on this request could have consequences beyond this single case. It may set a precedent for what kinds of internal AI documents companies can be required to disclose in copyright litigation, a question that courts across the country are likely to face as AI-related lawsuits continue to grow.
