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Tag: Copyright Infringement

  • Sony settles with Tencent over ‘slavish’ Horizon clone

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    Earlier this year Sony sued Tencent for copyright infringement over its Light of Motiram game, calling it a “slavish clone” of Horizon Zero Dawn. Then, earlier this month, Tencent agreed to stop promoting and publicly testing the game. Now, the two companies have reached a “confidential settlement” and the case has been dismissed, according to court documents seen by The Verge. Light of Motiram has also disappeared from Steam and Epic’s game stores.

    “SIE and Tencent are pleased to have reached a confidential resolution and will have no further public comment on this matter,” Tencent’s spokesperson told The Verge.

    When Sony first filed its lawsuit in July 2025, it said that Tencent’s game appeared to copy aspects of not just Horizon Zero Dawn, but other franchise games including Horizon Forbidden West and Lego Horizon Adventures. That included the post-apocalyptic setting with humans and machines coexisting, the visual appearance of characters and even the marketing materials — something Engadget certainly noticed when Tencent first announced the game.

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    Steve Dent

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  • Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and licensing its characters for Sora

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    (CNN) — Disney is taking a $1 billion equity stake in OpenAI, while also striking a deal that would allow its famous characters be used on Sora, the AI company’s video generation platform.

    Disney’s investment in OpenAI is the first such major licensing agreement for Sora.

    Under the agreement, users of OpenAI’s shortform video-generating social media network Sora will be allowed to make videos using more than 200 Disney animated characters. Those characters including Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Disney Princesses like Ariel, Belle, and Cinderella, characters from Frozen, Moana, and Toy Story. Animated characters from Marvel and Lucasfilm, including Black Panther and Star Wars characters like Yoda are included as well – although the agreement does not include any talent likenesses or voices.

    Users of OpenAI’s popular chatbot ChatGPT will also be able to ask the bot to create images using the Disney characters.

    “The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works,” Disney CEO Robert A. Iger, CEO said as part of a statement.

    OpenAI, which has come under scrutiny for copyright violations – and also for striking massive ‘circular’ deals leading to fears of an AI bubble – said the deal shows how the creative community and AI can get along.

    “Disney is the global gold standard for storytelling, and we’re excited to partner to allow Sora and ChatGPT Images to expand the way people create and experience great content,” said Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. “This agreement shows how AI companies and creative leaders can work together responsibly to promote innovation that benefits society, respect the importance of creativity, and help works reach vast new audiences.”

    Shortly after the announcement, Iger and Altman both sat down with CNBC’s David Faber, during which the Disney boss stressed that the deal “does not, in any way, represent a threat to the creators.”

    “In fact, the opposite, I think it honors them and respects them, in part because there’s a license fee associated with it,” Iger said, later adding that the goal is to “continue to honor, respect, value the creative community in general.”

    Iger also stressed that the deal allows Disney to “be comfortable that OpenAI is putting guardrails essentially around how these are used,” adding that, “really, there’s nothing for us to be concerned about from a consumer perspective.” Altman, too, stressed the presence of guardrails, telling Faber that “it’s very important that we enable Disney to set and evolve those guardrails over time, but they will, of course, be in there.”

    The deal is exclusive, per Iger, at least in part. The Disney CEO hinted that “there is exclusivity, basically, at the beginning of the three-year agreement,” but remained mum on what that means. Asked if OpenAI is pursuing similar deals with other companies, Altman said, “I won’t rule out anything in the future, but we think this alone is going to be a wonderful start.”

    Disney has previously sued AI companies for using their intellectual property. On Monday, the company sent Google a cease and desist letter, according to a source familiar with the situation.

    The cease and desist letter claims the company’s AI products, including its image and video generating products Veo and Nano Banana, are infringing Disney’s copyrights “on a massive scale,” by allowing users to create images and videos depicting their characters. The letter alleges that Google has “refused to implement any technological measures to mitigate or prevent copyright infringement.”

    In response, a Google spokesperson said they have “a longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship with Disney, and will continue to engage with them.”

    More generally, we use public data from the open web to build our AI and have built additional innovative copyright controls like Google-extended and Content ID for YouTube, which give sites and copyright holders control over their content.”

    Disney had already sent similar cease and desist letters to Meta and Character.AI. In June, Disney and Universal sued AI photo generation company Midjourney, alleging the company violated copyright law.

    This story has been updated with additional developments and context.

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    Hadas Gold and CNN

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  • Japan asks OpenAI not to infringe on ‘irreplaceable’ manga and anime content

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    Japan’s government has asked OpenAI not to infringe on anime and manga content that it called “irreplaceable treasures,” according to a report from ITMedia seen by IGN. The request was made by a key minister in charge of AI and IP in response to numerous videos from OpenAI’s Sora 2 generator that use copyrighted material from Japanese studios.

    “We have requested OpenAI not to engage in any actions that could constitute copyright infringement,” said cabinet minister Minoru Kiuchi at a press conference last week. “Anime and manga are irreplaceable treasures that we can be proud of around the world.”

    Launched on October 1, OpenAI’s Sora 2 can generate 1080p videos up to 20 seconds long with sound. The company also released the Sora app that uses Sora 2 to generate TikTok-style videos of nearly anything. Anime has been a key theme, with many short videos replicating copyrighted materials from franchises like DragonBall and Pokémon.

    Despite the demand, Japan has been one of the more progressive nations when it comes to artificial intelligence. The nation’s AI Promotion Act aims to boost the use of AI as an economic growth driver, while also outlining guidelines around copyright infringement. However, the topic of enforcement is still fuzzy so the government is trying to get a better grip on it. “Japan bears a responsibility to take the lead on making rules [around AI and copyright], precisely because we are a country… [that creates] anime, games, and music,” said parliament member Akihisa Shiozaki on his blog.

    Last month, OpenAI said it had contacted studios to give them the option of opting out of Sora 2 training on their materials, Reuters reported. The new process requires movie studios and other content owners to explicitly ask OpenAI to exclude their copyright material from videos generated by Sora. It’s not known which, if any, Japanese studios the company has contacted.

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    Steve Dent

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  • Apple hit with another class action lawsuit for alleged copyright infringement

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    Just about a month after being accused of using pirated books to train its AI, Apple is facing another similar proposed class action lawsuit. As first reported by Bloomberg Law, two neuroscience professors from SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, NY, claimed that Apple used their “registered works without authorization.” The neuroscientists, Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik, said Apple trained its AI models using “shadow libraries” and “web-crawling software” that provide access to pirated, copyrighted books, including two of their own.

    In the previous class action lawsuit, a separate pair of authors also alleged that Apple committed copyright infringement when using published works to train Apple Intelligence models without consent. Apple isn’t the only tech giant facing copyright lawsuits related to its AI, as OpenAI is in a similar situation after being sued by The New York Times for similar accusations. While these AI models are relatively new, there’s already a case that may have set some precedent. Earlier this year, Anthropic settled a class action lawsuit by agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to 500,000 authors involved in the case, which revolved around copyright claims.

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    Jackson Chen

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  • Disney sends cease and desist letter to Character.AI

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    Disney has demanded that Character.AI stop using its copyrighted characters. reports that the entertainment juggernaut sent a cease and desist letter to Character.AI, claiming that it has chatbots based on its franchises, including Pixar films, Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In addition to claiming copyright infringement, the letter questioned whether these protected characters were being used in problematic ways in conversations with underage users.

    “Character.ai’s infringing chatbots are known, in some cases, to be sexually exploitive and otherwise harmful and dangerous to children, offending Disney’s consumers and extraordinarily damaging Disney’s reputation and goodwill,” the letter said.

    Character.AI has been subject to legal and government scrutiny multiple times already over concerns that it has not provided sufficient safety guards for minors. The platform has been in failing to protect two different teenagers who discussed suicide with its chatbots and then took their own lives. It has also drawn the attention of the and .

    For now, at least, the platform appears to be responsive to Disney’s demands. “It’s always up to rightsholders to decide how people may interact with their IP, and we respond swiftly to requests to remove content that rightsholders report to us,” a representative said, per the Axios report. “These characters have been removed.”

    Disney has shown that it is willing to take legal action against AI companies. It along with Universal Studios in June on allegations of copyright infringement.

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    Anna Washenko

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  • Perplexity’s definition of copyright gets it sued by the dictionary

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    Merriam-Webster and its parent company Encyclopedia Britannica are the latest to take on AI in court. The plaintiffs have sued Perplexity, claiming that AI company’s “answer engine” product unlawfully copies their copyrighted materials. They are also alleging copyright infringement for instances where Perplexity’s AI creates false or inaccurate hallucinations that it then wrongly attributes to Britannica or Merriam-Webster. The , filed in New York federal court, is seeking unspecified monetary damages and an order that blocks Perplexity from misusing their content.

    “Perplexity’s so-called “answer engine” eliminates users’ clicks on Plaintiffs’ and other web publishers’ websites—and, in turn, starves web publishers of revenue—by generating responses to users’ queries that substitute the content from other information websites,” the filing reads. “To build its substitute product, Perplexity engages in massive copying of Plaintiffs’ and other web publishers’ protected content without authorization or remuneration.”

    This isn’t Perplexity’s first time facing allegations that it has unlawfully taken another website’s content. , the AI company was accused of copyright infringement by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. Just a pair of Japanese media companies, Nikkei and the Asahi Shimbun, sued it on similar claims.

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    Anna Washenko

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  • Warner Bros. Discovery is suing Midjourney for copyright infringement

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    Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a lawsuit against popular AI image generator Midjourney, accusing it of stealing and exploiting its intellectual properties. The complaint revolves around the AI tool’s ability to generate images and videos of Warner Bros.’ popular fictional characters, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Scooby Doo, Bugs Bunny and his friends from Looney Tunes. “Midjourney thinks it is above the law,” the company wrote in its lawsuit. It said that the image generator sells a commercial subscription service powered by AI technology that was illegally trained using its copyrighted works.

    The company argued that Midjourney has the technology to prevent users from generating images of the characters it owns. It apparently refused to generate videos based on Warner Bros.’ properties when it first launched its video model. But within the past couple of weeks, it allegedly removed those protections and told its users that they would encounter “fewer blocked jobs.” The ability to generate Warner Bros.’ characters are a clear draw for its subscription service that costs $10 to $120 a month, the media conglomerate said. “It is hard to imagine copyright infringement that is any more willful than what Midjourney is doing here,” the plaintiff added. “Midjourney has prioritized and sought to preserve the hundreds of millions of dollars it earns annually from its service by doubling down on its theft of copyrighted works.”

    In the complaint, the company gave several examples of Midjourney-generated images and video stills next to images and screencaps of its movies and shows. The image above, for instance, shows Midjourney’s output from the prompt “Batman, screencap from The Dark Knight.” next to actual promotional materials from the Christian Bale-led movie. Further, generic prompts like “classic comic book superhero battle” could lead to output with WB characters even if they’re not specifically mentioned.

    Midjourney is already facing a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Disney and Universal Studios back in June. They accused the AI service of “help[ing] itself to countless” copyrighted works to train its models and for infringing on their copyright by allowing users to generate images of characters from Star Wars, Shrek, The Simpsons and Despicable Me, among other properties.

    Warner Bros. Discovery is now asking the court for statutory damages of “up to $150,000 per infringed work by virtue of Midjourney’s willful infringement.” We’ve reached out to Midjourney and will update this post when we hear back.

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    Mariella Moon

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  • The New York Times Sues Open AI, Microsoft For Copyright Infringement

    The New York Times Sues Open AI, Microsoft For Copyright Infringement

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    In what may be a landmark case, the New York Times has sued Open AI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, saying the publication’s content is being by the platform to feed automated chatbots, constituting “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.”

    It’s the first time a major media organization has sued an AI platforms although there are a handful of pending cases brought by IP owners from Sarah Silverman to John Grisham to Getty Images.

    The suit says Open AI should be responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” chatbot and training models that use copyrighted material from The Times should be destroyed.

    Generative AI, a surging and well-funded field led by Microsoft’s Open AI  trains chatbots on large data sets. The suit says the platform uses “The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it.”

    The Authors Guild, John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, Michael Connelly, Jodi Picoult and a group of other famous fiction writers filed a class action lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that their technology is infringing on their works.

    Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon and Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang are among another group of writers that filed a class action lawsuit against Meta in federal court for having “copied and ingested” their works to train its LLaMA AI platform.

    At issue that case is training data for AI software programs that are designed to produce convincingly natural text in response user prompts. They are trained, the suit says, “by copying massive amounts of text and extracting expressive information from it. The body of text is referred to as the training dataset,” said that suit. The Plaintiffs have copyrights for their books and written works “and never consented to their use as training materials for LLaMA” — the AI platform of Facebook parent Meta. 

    In July, Sarah Silverman and two other authors sued OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement.

    More…

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    jillg366

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  • Chipotle Sues Sweetgreen for Stealing Its Name | Entrepreneur

    Chipotle Sues Sweetgreen for Stealing Its Name | Entrepreneur

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    You can call your new burrito bowl whatever you’d like — just don’t call it the “Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl.”

    That’s the latest gauntlet thrown by Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc, which is suing its fast-casual restaurant rival Sweetgreen Inc in California for trademark infringement.

    Chipotle lawyers showed up in a federal court on Tuesday, claiming that Sweetgreen’s new menu item, the “Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl,” crosses the line.

    Chipotle argues that Sweetgreen’s burrito bowl is “very similar and directly competitive” with its own. They said the item had similar ingredients, such as chicken, rice, and black beans.

    Moreover, by using the word chipotle in its marketing, Sweetgreen is “making prominent use of the famous Chipotle trademark.”

    Chipotle, the spice, is a Mexican powder made from dried, smoked jalapeno peppers.

    Sweetgreen said it does not comment on pending litigation. But its shares fell more than 10% today.

    Related: ‘Shoot Them’: Disgruntled Customers Attack Chipotle Workers Who Won’t Give Them Extra Cheese

    Sweetgreen just introduced the burrito bowl last month

    Sweetgreen, known for its healthy salads and grain bowls, has been on a mission to introduce “heartier” items to its menu offerings.

    According to a press release from the company, internal studies found that their customers preferred chicken as their protein by 70%.

    “The Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl is our answer to heartier meal options,” said Nicolas Jammet, sweetgreen Co-Founder and Chief Concept Officer. “Inspired by bold chipotle spices, this protein-heavy option balances a brand new flavor profile for sweetgreen.”

    The product was introduced on March 30.

    But Chipotle is not happy with the name. In a lawsuit, the company claimed they contacted Sweetgreen to cease and desist.

    They even offered a new name suggestion — “Chicken Bowl with chipotle” (lower case C)

    Sweetgreen did not seem too sweet on that and failed to respond.

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    Jonathan Small

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  • ‘AI Art’ Companies & DeviantArt Are Being Sued By Artists

    ‘AI Art’ Companies & DeviantArt Are Being Sued By Artists

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    Screenshot: Futurama

    Stability AI and Midjourney—two of the biggest names in the exploding field of AI-generated imagery—and portfolio site DeviantArt have become the target of a class action lawsuit, filed in California on behalf of artists.

    As we’ve covered previously, AI-generated imagery is a highly contentious field, one where “artists write algorithms not to follow a set of rules, but to ‘learn’ a specific aesthetic by analyzing thousands of images. The algorithm then tries to generate new images in adherence to the aesthetics it has learned.”

    The suit has been brought forward by three plaintiffs, all artists: Sarah Andersen (of Sarah’s Scribbles), Kelly McK­er­nan and Karla Ortiz, who on behalf of all artists affected are “seeking compensation for damages caused by Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney, and an injunction to prevent future harms”.

    It makes numerous and serious allegations:

    The lawsuit alleges direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement related to forgeries, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), violation of class members’ rights of publicity, breach of contract related to the DeviantArt Terms of Service, and various violations of California’s unfair competition laws.

    As lawyer Matthew Butterick says in his post about the case, the three companies are being targeted by “writ­ers, artists, pro­gram­mers, and other cre­ators” who are “con­cerned about AI sys­tems being trained on vast amounts of copy­righted work with no con­sent, no credit, and no com­pen­sa­tion.”

    Stability AI and Midjourney are the companies behind the two most popular AI-generated art platforms, while DeviantArt—most commonly known as a portfolio and community art site—is being included for its own work in fucking up massively.

    For more technical details on the suit—or contact details if you’re an artist and would like to get involved—you can check out Butterick’s post here.

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    Luke Plunkett

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  • Sarah Silverman sues OpenAI and Meta alleging copyright infringement | CNN Business

    Sarah Silverman sues OpenAI and Meta alleging copyright infringement | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors are suing Meta and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, alleging the companies’ AI language models were trained on copyrighted materials from their books without their knowledge or consent.

    The pair of lawsuits against OpenAI and Facebook-parent Meta were filed in a San Francisco federal court on Friday, and are both seeking class action status. Silverman, the author of “The Bedwetter,” is joined in filing the lawsuits by fellow authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey.

    A new crop of AI tools has gained tremendous attention in recent months for their ability to generate written work and images in response to user prompts. The large language models underpinning these tools are trained on vast troves of online data. But this practice has raised some concerns that these models may be sweeping up copyrighted works without permission – and that these works could ultimately be served to train tools that upend the livelihoods of creatives.

    The complaint against OpenAI claims that “when ChatGPT is prompted, ChatGPT generates summaries of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works—something only possible if ChatGPT was trained on Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works.” The authors “did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training material for ChatGPT,” according to the complaint.

    The complaint against Meta similarly claims that the company used the authors’ copyrighted books to train LLaMA, the set of large language models released by Meta in February. The suit claims that much of the material used to train Meta’s language models “comes from copyrighted works—including books written by Plaintiffs—that were copied by Meta without consent, without credit, and without compensation.”

    The suit against Meta also alleges that the company accessed the copyrighted books via an online “shadow library” website that includes a large quantity of copyrighted material.

    Meta declined to comment on the lawsuit. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The legal action from Silverman isn’t the first to focus on how large language models are trained. A separate lawsuit filed against OpenAI last month alleged the company misappropriated vast swaths of peoples’ personal data from the internet to train its AI tools. (OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.)

    In May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared to acknowledge more needed to be done to address concerns from creators about how AI systems use their works.

    “We’re trying to work on new models where if an AI system is using your content, or if it’s using your style, you get paid for that,” he said at an event.

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