Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
Disney, Universal and Warner Bros Discovery have jointly filed a lawsuit against the Chinese creator of a popular artificial intelligence video app over what they claim is “wilful and brazen” copyright infringement.
The suit against MiniMax, which owns Hailuo AI, a video generator that markets itself as “Hollywood studio in your pocket”, is the first of its kind against a Chinese AI company.
The studios argue the service is a threat to the US motion picture industry and are seeking the “maximum amount allowable by law”, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The lawsuit includes several screenshots of MiniMax advertisements that feature some of the studios’ best-known characters, including Disney-owned Darth Vader and Universal’s Minions. The images bear MiniMax Hailuo branding.
The images are generated when a user submits a text prompt for a popular character in a particular setting. The results, the companies allege, are “high quality, downloadable images and videos” using copyrighted characters.
They also allege that MiniMax uses images of their characters to advertise the service to US consumers, which the studios claim falsely implies an endorsement by the copyright holders. Hailuo AI’s official Instagram account has used an illegal copy of Warner Bros’ Joker to promote the service, according to the suit.
Shanghai-based MiniMax is one of China’s leading large language model start-ups, backed by HongShan — formerly Sequoia China — private equity group Hillhouse and Alibaba.
It has received praise among developers for its text-to-video models. Hailuo, which lags behind rivals Midjourney and Kling AI in rankings of the most popular generative AI apps, has been lauded for its ability to produce realistic and cinematic videos.
The lawsuit comes at a sensitive time for MiniMax, which is planning to list in Hong Kong to raise funds for its international expansion strategy, according to people familiar with the matter.
MiniMax is also behind the character chatbot Talkie, which was its most significant revenue driver last year, but the company has been seeking to diversify away from the highly competitive market, particularly after the app was briefly taken off US Apple app stores in December for unspecified “technical reasons”.
MiniMax did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit follows a similar one launched in June by Disney and Universal against Midjourney, a US-based AI image generator that describes itself as a “small, self-funded team”.
In that suit, the studios called Midjourney a “bottomless pit of plagiarism”. Midjourney said in a legal filing in August that its use of the material fell under “fair use” protections.
Two recent district court decisions in California have ruled that using copyrighted works to train AI models is considered “fair” even without the owner’s permission.
Additional reporting by Cristina Criddle in San Francisco
Source link
