What began as a lawsuit by Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. against Midjourney for alleged copyright infringement now took a turn that no one expected. The artificial intelligence startup asked a federal judge to force the studios themselves to reveal how they use AI internally, including training datasets, business plans, model weights and even presentations before their boards of directors.

Why Midjourney calls for full transparency

Midjourney's defense is based on a fairly direct and even a bit ironic argument. His lawyer, Bobby Ghajar, maintains that if the studios are “doing exactly the same thing they seek to punish,” then that information is key to supporting the legitimate use that the company claims in its defense. In other words, Midjourney wants to demonstrate that the film industry has already thoroughly adopted generative AI in its own creative and business processes, although it publicly maintains a discourse of rejection of these tools.

The company asked Judge John Kronstadt to reverse a previous decision that limited the scope of this request. The studios, for their part, stood their ground and only agreed to share data on consumer-facing AI tools, leaving their internal systems off the table. That point is precisely where the legal tension is concentrated at the moment, because Midjourney insists that the relevant information is precisely in those processes that Hollywood prefers to keep under lock and key.

Why did they sue Midjourney?

All of this comes from a battle that started in June 2025, when Disney, Universal and other majors such as Lucasfilm, Marvel and DreamWorks Animation filed a 110-page lawsuit accusing Midjourney of operating as an “infinite copy vending machine.” The studies allege that the platform trained its models with protected material and allows images of iconic characters such as Darth Vader, Yoda or the Minions to be generated with just a couple of text prompts.

The lawsuit requests million-dollar compensation and a court order that stops the startup's service, in addition to demanding technological safeguards that prevent this type of content from continuing to be generated. With the launch of a commercial video service on the horizon, the urgency for studios is growing, as each second of AI-generated footage represents, by their own calculations, dozens of potential breaches.

What is at stake for the industry

This crossover of accusations is not just legal, because it touches a much bigger nerve within the entertainment industry. Tools like Midjourney and Runway are already widely used in pre-production, for conceptual art, storyboards and visual references, reducing work times by up to 40% according to recent industry data. The curious detail is that this use is rarely publicly recognized, although it is increasingly widespread among screenwriters and directors.

Precisely for this reason, Midjourney's petition seeks not only to defend itself in court, but also to expose an uncomfortable contradiction that runs through all of Hollywood. While the majors litigate against generative AI in public, many of their internal divisions are exploring it, testing it and probably already integrating it into different levels of production. This case could set an important precedent for how far an AI company can go to defend itself, and also how much transparency big studios will have to offer regarding their own technology practices in the coming months.

This litigation is becoming one of the most watched files in the global debate on AI and copyright, with implications that go far beyond Midjourney or Hollywood.