Warner Bros. is suing artificial intelligence company Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging that the startup enables its millions of subscribers to create AI-generated images and videos of copyrighted characters like Superman and Bugs Bunny.
It's the third big Hollywood studio to sue Midjourney in Los Angeles federal court after Disney and Universal filed a joint lawsuit in June.
Midjourney, based in San Francisco, didn't respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit alleges Midjourney trained its AI system on “illegal copies” of Warner Bros. works and encourages its users to pick iconic characters like Batman, Wonder Woman, Scooby-Doo or the Powerpuff Girls and create downloaded images and videos of those characters in “every imaginable scene.”
Even a generic prompt for the AI tool to produce a “classic comic book superhero battle” will generate high-quality images of DC Studios figures such as Superman, Batman and Flash, according to the lawsuit.
Warner Bros. says “Midjourney thinks it is above the law” and “could easily stop its theft and exploitation” of intellectual property in the same way it sets limits on violence or nudity.
The lawsuit alleges Midjourney's practices create “consumer confusion regarding what is lawful and what is not lawful by misleading its subscribers to believe that Midjourney’s massive copying and the countless infringing images and videos generated by its Service are somehow authorized by Warner Bros. Discovery.”
The entertainment giant says it is entitled to up to $150,000 in damages per infringed work.
Midjourney has denied copyright infringement allegations in the Disney and Universal case, arguing in an August court filing that while its AI tool “had to be trained on billions of publicly available images,” it did so “in order to learn visual concepts” and how they correspond to language.
“Training a generative AI model to understand concepts by extracting statistical information embedded in copyrighted works is a quintessentially transformative fair use – a determination resoundingly supported by courts that have considered the issue,” said Midjourney’s response, citing recent court rulings in lawsuits by published authors against Anthropic and Facebook parent Meta.
Midjourney also said the onus was on its customers to follow Midjourney’s terms of use, which prohibit infringing intellectual property rights.
In a 2022 interview with The Associated Press, Midjourney CEO David Holz described his image-making service as “kind of like a search engine” pulling in a wide swath of images from across the internet. He compared copyright concerns about the technology with how such laws have adapted to human creativity.
“Can a person look at somebody else’s picture and learn from it and make a similar picture?” Holz said. “Obviously, it’s allowed for people and if it wasn’t, then it would destroy the whole professional art industry, probably the nonprofessional industry too. To the extent that AIs are learning like people, it’s sort of the same thing and if the images come out differently then it seems like it’s fine.”
The Motion Picture Association endorsed the Warner Bros. lawsuit in a statement Friday.
“We remain concerned that copyright infringement, left unchecked, threatens the entire American motion picture industry, which supports over 2 million jobs in all 50 states and drives countless economic, social, and cultural benefits,” said MPA CEO Charles Rivkin.
FILE - David Corenswet arrives at the premiere of "Superman" on Monday, July 7, 2025, at TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
NAKHON RATCHASIMA, Thailand (AP) — A construction crane collapsed onto an elevated road near Bangkok, killing two people on Thursday, a day after another crane fell on a moving passenger train in northeastern Thailand and killed 32 people.
The work on an extension of the Rama 2 Road expressway — a major artery leading from Bangkok — has become notorious for construction accidents, some of them fatal.
The crane collapsed at part of the road project in Samut Sakhon province, trapping two vehicles in the wreckage, according to the government’s Public Relations Department.
Transport Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn said on Thai TV Channel 7 that two people had died. It was unclear if anyone else had been trapped in the wreckage.
There was uncertainty about the number of victims because the site is still considered too dangerous for search teams to enter, said Suchart Tongteng, a rescue worker with the Ruamkatanyu Foundation.
“At this moment, we still can’t say whether another collapse could happen,” he said, citing dangling steel plates. “That’s why there are no rescue personnel inside the scene, only teams conducting on-site safety assessments.”
At the site of Wednesday's train derailment, the search for survivors ended, Nakhon Ratchasima Gov. Anuphong Suksomnit said. Three passengers listed as missing were presumed to have gotten off the train earlier, but that was still being investigated.
Officials believed 171 people had been aboard the train’s three carriages, which were being removed from the scene Thursday.
The crane that fell, crushing part of the train, was a launching gantry crane, a mobile piece of equipment often used in building elevated roadways.
Police were still collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses and have not pressed charges, provincial Police Chief Narongsak Promta told reporters.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry reported a South Korean man in his late 30s, was among the dead.
The high-speed rail project where the accident occurred is associated with the plan to connect China with Southeast Asia under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
In August 2024, a railway tunnel on the planned route, also in Nakhon Ratchasima, collapsed, killing three workers.
Anan Phonimdaeng, acting governor of the State Railway of Thailand, said the project’s contractor is Italian-Thai Development, with a Chinese company responsible for design and construction supervision.
A statement posted on the website of the company, also known as Italthai, expressed condolences to the victims and said the company would pay compensation to the families of the dead and hospitalization expenses for the injured.
Transport Minister Phiphat said Italthai was also the lead contractor on the highway project where Thursday's accident took place, though several other companies are also involved.
The rail accident had already sparked outrage because Italthai was also the co-lead contractor for the State Audit Building in Bangkok that collapsed during construction last March during a major earthquake centered in Myanmar. The building's collapse was the worst quake damage in Thailand and about 100 people were killed.
Twenty-three individuals and companies have been indicted, including Italthai's president and the local director for the company China Railway No. 10, the project’s joint venture partner. The charges in the case include professional negligence and document forgery, and Thailand's Department of Special Investigation has recommended more indictments.
The involvement of Chinese companies in both projects has also drawn attention, as has Italthai and Chinese companies’ involvement in the construction of several expressway extensions in and around Bangkok where several accidents, some fatal, have occurred.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Wednesday the government was aware of the rail accident and had expressed condolences.
Associated Press writers Wasamon Audjarint in Bangkok and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
Relatives of victims and others wait at a hospital, a day after a construction crane fell into a passenger train in Nakhon Ratchasima province, Thailand, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Relatives wait at a hospital to receive bodies of victims, a day after a construction crane fell into a passenger train in Nakhon Ratchasima province, Thailand, Thursday, Jan.15, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
Forensic workers inspect the site of a train accident, a day after a construction crane fell into a passenger train in Nakhon Ratchasima province, Thailand, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
A cuddly toy lies on the ground at the site of a train accident, a day after a construction crane fell into a passenger train in Nakhon Ratchasima province, Thailand, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
A construction crane that collapsed on the Rama 2 Road elevated expressway in Samut Sakhon province, Thailand on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Arnun Chonmahatrakool)
A construction crane that collapsed on the Rama 2 Road elevated expressway in Samut Sakhon province, Thailand on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Arnun Chonmahatrakool)
A construction crane that collapsed on the Rama 2 Road elevated expressway in Samut Sakhon province, Thailand on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Arnun Chonmahatrakool)
