Midjourney Pushes to Strip Discovery Limits, Wants to See Every Prompt Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. Ever Sent It

Since Disney and Universal filed their copyright infringement lawsuit against Midjourney last year — followed months later by Warner Bros. — the central dispute has moved beyond whose characters appeared in which generated images. The fight is increasingly about what the studios themselves are doing with AI, and whether a federal court will make them show their cards.

What the Judge Already Ordered

A judge previously ruled that the three studios must produce documentation about their generative AI use, but only when that use led to "consumer-facing" videos and images. That scope limitation is now the target of Midjourney's latest filing, according to TechCrunch.

Midjourney argues the restriction is unfair because it lets the studios "cherry-pick only those documents they believe support their market harm claims while depriving Midjourney of documents that would support its defenses." That language comes directly from the startup's filing.

The Core Argument

Midjourney's theory is straightforward: if Disney, Universal, or Warner Bros. are using image-generating AI internally — for storyboarding, concept development, or any other pre-production purpose — and if building those tools involved training on unlicensed copyrighted content, then the studios are doing the same thing they are suing Midjourney for doing.

The filing states the withheld documents "would reveal whether, behind closed doors, they are doing exactly what they are suing Midjourney for doing."

As a specific example, Midjourney argues that if the studios are developing image-generating AI models "for internal use in storyboarding or ideating content for film or TV, that evidence would equally demonstrate that it is an industry custom, even among the studios themselves, to download and train AI on unlicensed copyrighted content."

Midjourney also wants something else: every prompt the studios sent through Midjourney's own platform, and the resulting outputs, not just the specific prompts that allegedly generated infringing images. The studios, by Midjourney's account, have been selective about which prompts they've disclosed.

The startup's underlying legal defense is fair use. Training AI models on copyrighted material, it argues, is a transformative use permitted under law. Documenting that major rights-holders do the same thing internally would bolster that argument considerably.

The Studios' Position

The studios' lead attorney, David Singer, has called Midjourney's expanded discovery push a "fishing expedition." His stated position is that the studios are not trying to shut down AI technology or Midjourney's business entirely. According to TechCrunch's reporting on Singer's prior statements, the studios "simply want Midjourney to stop copying their movies and TV shows and to stop distributing, publicly displaying, publicly performing, and creating derivative works that include copies of their famous characters without authorization."

The studios' copyright claims are narrow and targeted. Midjourney's models, when prompted, can generate recognizable likenesses of Bart Simpson, Darth Vader, and other owned characters. That is a specific and concrete harm under copyright law, distinct from the broader question of how AI systems are trained. A court could rule the studios' internal AI use completely irrelevant to whether Midjourney's outputs infringe specific character copyrights.

The question of whether internal, non-public AI use is legally comparable to a public-facing product that reproduces protected characters remains unsettled. The studios have a reasonable argument that those are different acts with different legal consequences.

Why This Matters Beyond the Courtroom

The AI-copyright litigation wave running through the entertainment industry will be shaped by where courts draw the line on training data and fair use. Midjourney's discovery request is an attempt to bring the studios' own practices into the record before any ruling on the merits.

If the judge expands the discovery scope, the studios face a choice: produce internal documentation that could expose their own AI workflows, or fight the order and potentially delay a case they initiated. Either path carries cost.

If the judge keeps the current limits in place, Midjourney loses a potentially significant piece of its defense and the case narrows back to whether its outputs infringe specific copyrighted characters.