AI models aren't copycats: They're just learners like us

Allegations of AI copyright violation often overlook the fact that these models don't copy but learn

- RAHUL MATTHAN

On June 11, 2025, Disney and Universal filed a lawsuit against Midjourney, claiming that the AI image-generation platform was creating "recognizable" images of characters over which they held exclusive rights. This is the latest in a series of complaints lodged against AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, alleging that this revolutionary new technology conflicts with the way intellectual property law has operated for centuries.

At the heart of all these cases lies the prohibition under copyright law against the reproduction of literary and artistic works without the owner's permission. AI companies admittedly "train" their models on text, audio, and video material scraped from the internet. Given that much of the output they generate contains similar content, there is a presumption that they have somehow "copied" these works without the permission of copyright holders.

Copyright law was established in response to the very first innovation of the information age—the printing press. When publishers realized that the works they had commissioned were being sold in the market at a fraction of the price they charged, they asked for legal protection—not only for the physical books they had printed, but also for the ideas contained within them.