Fresh Midjourney AI video tool generated by AI will produce animated clips with characters with Disney and Universal copyright, Wired-W this video from the beloved character Pixar Wall-E Wall-e Holding a Pistol.
It was a busy month for Midjourney. This week, generative startup AI released Its sophisticated up-to-date video tool, V1, which allows users to create compact animated clips from images that they generate or send. The current version of the AI Midjourney video tool requires an image as a starting point; Film generation is not supported with text hints.
The V1 edition appears on the heels of a completely different type of advertisement earlier in June: Hollywood Behemoths Disney and Universal made a hit trial against midjourney, claiming that it violates copyright law, generating images with the intellectual property of the studio.
Midjourney did not immediately answer the requests for comment. Disney and Universal repeated the statements made by the management of the trial, including the legal head of Disney, Horacio Gutierrez, claiming that the production of Midjourney is “piracy”.
It seems that Midjourney could try to place the handrails for V1. In our tests, this was blocked by animations from the hints based on FrozenElsa, Boss Baby, Goofy and Mickey Mouse, although she would still generate images of these characters. When Wired asked V1 for the animated images of Elsa, “Moderator AI” blocked prompt before generating movies. “Al moderation is cautious in the case of realistic films, especially people,” read a pop -up message.
These restrictions that seem to be handrails are incomplete. Wired tests show that V1 will generate animated clips from the wide range of Universal and Disney characters, including Homer Simpson, Shrek, Minions, Deadpool and Star WarsC-3PO and Darth Vader. For example, asked for the image of creatures eating a banana, Midjourney generated four outings with recognizable versions of charming yellow characters. Then, when connected, he clicks the “Animate” button on one of the results, Midjourney generated another video with Banana-Peel eating characters and so on.
Although it seems that Midjourney has blocked some hints related to Disney and universal for movies, Wired can sometimes bypass potential handrails during testing using spelling variants or repeating the prompt. Midjourney also allows users to provide a prompt to inform animations; Using this function, Wired was able to generate clips of copyright protected forms behaving in adults, such as Wall-e waving firearms and burning of the Yoda joint.
Disney and Universal’s lawsuit is a stern threat to Midjourney, which also faces the additional legal challenges of visual artists who also claim copyright violation. Although it focused mainly on providing examples from Midjourney’s image generation tools, the complaint claims that the video “will only increase the ability of Midjourney to distribute copies, reproduction and derivatives of works protected by the law.”
The complaint includes dozens of alleged images of Midjourney showing the figures of Universal and Disney. The set was initially produced as part of a report on the so -called “Visual Plagiarism” Midjourney from the critic of AI and cognitive scientist Gary Marcus and visual artist Reid Southen.
“Reid and I noticed this problem 18 months ago, and there were very small progress and very small changes,” says Marcus. “We still have the same situation in which unlicensed materials are used, and the handrails that work a bit, but not very well. Despite all conversations about the interpretative progress in artificial intelligence, what we get is better graphics, not the basic solution to this problem.”