Disney, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures Sue Chinese AI Company (www.hollywoodreporter.com)

Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Universal Pictures have filed a copyright lawsuit in California against Chinese AI company MiniMax, accusing it of building Hailuo AI — an image and video generator marketed as a “Hollywood studio in your pocket” — by scraping and training on studio-owned movies and TV shows. The complaint alleges Hailuo can produce images and short videos of iconic characters (the suit cites examples like Darth Vader, Minions, Guardians of the Galaxy and Superman) and even returned a generated Darth Vader image with a MiniMax watermark. Studios warn that, left unchecked, the system could soon create unauthorized, feature-length infringing videos and seek unspecified damages, disgorgement of profits and an injunction to stop MiniMax’s exploitation of their works. The case is the latest front in a growing legal battle over AI training data and poses key implications for the ML community: it could shape precedent on whether web-scraped copyrighted audiovisual material can be used to train generative models, and what outputs count as infringing reproductions versus permissible transformations. Practically, AI developers may face greater pressure to adopt curated/licensed datasets, provenance tracking, output filters or architectural controls to prevent character reconstruction, as well as cross-border legal exposure. A ruling against MiniMax would accelerate industry moves toward licensing frameworks, stricter data governance, and technical defenses (watermark detection, memorization mitigation) to reduce legal risk.