If you stay through the credits of Jurassic Park: Rebirth, Bad Guys 2, or How to Train Your Dragon, you’ll get a clear message on screen from Universal.
As The Hollywood Reporter published yesterday, studios are stepping up in the fight.
“This motion picture is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries,” the warning says. “Unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution.”
This is Universal’s unequivocal statement to AI companies that if you train your programs on their copyrighted work, they will sue you.
We expect many other studios to follow with similar wording on their releases.
Studios are fighting to make sure these AI companies don’t scan and recreate characters, VFX, story, or anything else they’re protected against. And they’re trying to keep up with laws both US and international, that need to be written almost as fast as the tech evolves.
AI tools like Showrunner and Midjourney aim to allow users to create Hollywood-level work at home for their entertainment or to release and make money.
But both these programs cannot exist by copying existing shows. That’s like a Showrunner’s entire statement, and I’m surprised they haven’t been sued by Rick & Morty or South Park, whose style they aped for all their ads.
Now, there will be some artists who license their work to these companies. fine. Do whatever you want. But major movie studios are not in the business of giving anything away for free.
That’s how these AI companies operate: they scan the entire internet without paying. And when it comes to movies, people are worried that they’re illegally downloading them or ripping them so they can cannibalize their visuals.
And they have some evidence that things like Midjourney have allegedly been trained on this kind of material. We’ve seen suspicious outputs via direct prompts where it creates images from Shrek and Avengers that look exactly like things within those movies.
The lawsuits from studios are happening as we speak, but now they’re adding disclaimers to releases to make sure there are no loopholes.
Lawsuits against Midjourney and other AI companies are ongoing, but we’ll need the courts to catch up with technology and decide what’s protected by law.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
