Advertising Law Blog

In 2026, among the major copyright cases to watch is the consolidated case against Midjourney, Inc. pending in the Central District of California brought by Disney, Warner Brothers, and Universal. Midjourney offers an AI tool that generates images based on text prompts and may soon offer video services. The studios allege that Midjourney’s use of the studios’ content to train Midjourney’s AI models infringes their copyrights. Midjourney’s primary defense is that its use of the content is “fair use” under the copyright laws. Midjourney claims that its AI technology is “a type of neural network design to produce original images in response to user instructions.” It further claims that its AI model must be trained on billions of publicly available images so that it may learn how to pair visual concepts with the language prompts. Midjourney likens this approach to how a human learns to draw or paint – “not by memorizing individual artworks, but by internalizing patterns and techniques through repeated exposure and practice.” The outcome of these consolidated cases will likely set significant precedents for the future of AI development and the use of copyrighted content for AI training.