Disney, Universal & Warner Bros. Discovery Sue MiniMax Over Hailuo AI

Disney, Universal (NBCUniversal) and Warner Bros. Discovery have filed a joint lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against Chinese company MiniMax, owner of the Hailuo AI image and video generation platform. The studios allege that Hailuo “pirates and plunders Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works on a massive scale,” producing infringing images and videos of their characters and marketing the app as a “Hollywood studio in your pocket.”

Key claims in the complaint

• The studios say Hailuo generates infringing content featuring characters from Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Minions and other films and cartoons, and include dozens of screenshots in the filing.
• They allege MiniMax failed to take reasonable steps to prevent infringement and actively encouraged users to create infringing content via in-app ads and features.
• The complaint describes MiniMax’s business model as deliberately built around using protected works, calling its conduct “willful and brazen.”

Context

This lawsuit follows a wave of litigation by media and publishing companies against AI firms. Warner Bros. Discovery and others have separately filed suits over Midjourney, and publishers and authors have pursued cases against other AI companies (e.g., Anthropic). These cases center on whether AI models may be trained on or reproduce copyrighted works without authorization.

For more details, see reporting from AOL: Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery & NBCU sue MiniMax over Hailuo AI.

What do you think?

Should AI developers be held fully accountable for models that generate copyrighted characters and scenes? Share your thoughts in the comments.