Midjourney Appeals Order Limiting AI Use Disclosure

Midjourney Appeals Order Limiting AI Use Disclosure

Midjourney is asking a federal judge in the Central District of California to overturn a magistrate judge's June 16, 2026 order that limited its discovery into how Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. use AI internally, in the consolidated copyright lawsuits the studios brought over AI-generated Batman, Superman, and other characters. Midjourney argues the studios' own AI-training practices are directly relevant to its fair-use and unclean-hands defenses, and that the magistrate judge wrongly drew a line between the studios' public-facing AI tools and their internal AI use. The studios had resisted broader discovery; the magistrate allowed only some requested data through while shielding the rest as irrelevant or protected work product.

For teams tracking AI copyright litigation, this discovery fight previews a defense strategy spreading across AI lawsuits: model makers accused of training on copyrighted works are pushing courts to let them examine whether the plaintiffs suing them train their own AI systems the same way, turning a copyright holder's AI practices into evidence for the defendant.

The magistrate judge's order let the studios withhold broader data on their AI use, finding some of Midjourney's requests irrelevant or shielded by work-product privilege, while requiring production of some narrower categories.

The district judge's ruling on Midjourney's motion for review will determine whether the studios must produce broader internal AI-use data. A win for Midjourney would set a notable precedent expanding discovery into plaintiffs' own AI practices in copyright suits against AI companies; a loss would reinforce current limits on this kind of discovery strategy.