Hollywood’s $300 Million Showdown: Disney & Universal Sue Midjourney AI for ‘Endless Plagiarism’

Hollywood is taking generative AI to court, the Pentagon is officially enlisting OpenAI, and everyone from Meta to Amazon is rolling out new AI superpowers. It’s clear we’ve hit a tipping point: AI isn’t just disrupting industries—it’s rewriting their rulebooks in real time.

In today’s TLDR AI:

• Hollywood giants file a blockbuster lawsuit against Midjourney

• Meta drops one-tap AI video editing for everyone

• Baidu’s dual-avatar livestream racks up ¥55 M in six hours

• OpenAI scores a $200 M Pentagon prototype deal

• Amazon’s Andy Jassy rallies employees around 1,000+ Gen-AI projects

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

🤯 Hollywood sues Midjourney for “bottomless plagiarism”

• TLDR: Disney (Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar) and Universal/DreamWorks jointly filed a 110-page complaint in California federal court.

• The charge: Midjourney allegedly “reproduces and distributes endless unauthorized copies,” riding on characters like Darth Vader, Iron Man and Shrek.

• Money on the line: Plaintiffs claim Midjourney cleared $300 M revenue in 2024 while ignoring repeated takedown requests.

• Why it matters: This is the most muscular IP attack yet on a Gen-AI image model—expect ripple effects across every creative AI platform.

🎬 Meta makes AI video edits a tap away

• TLDR: Meta AI now lets users transform 10-second clips with 50+ preset prompts—swap outfits, lighting, even turn yourself into a graphic-novel hero.

• Where to try: Live inside the Meta AI app, Meta.ai website and the standalone Edits app across 15+ countries.

• Road-map tease: Text-prompt-based, full-length video generation is promised “later this year,” powered by Meta’s Movie Gen research.

• Why it matters: With short-form video ruling social feeds, Meta just inserted generative magic directly into its creator pipeline—no editing chops required.

🛍️ Baidu’s AI avatars outsell humans in a 6-hour marathon

• TLDR: Luo Yonghao’s digital twin + a co-host pulled 13M viewers and ¥55 M ($7.7 M), eclipsing his own human-hosted May stream in just 26 minutes.

• Macro stat: Baidu says 100K+ digital humans already work across China’s ¥6.8 T live-commerce sector, cutting seller costs 80 % while boosting conversions 62%.

• Why it matters: When photorealistic, tireless AI sellers outperform celebrities, the definition of “influencer marketing” flips overnight.

🛡️ Pentagon signs $200M prototype pact with OpenAI

• TLDR: OpenAI Public Sector LLC will develop “frontier AI” for both war-fighting and enterprise use under a Chief Digital & AI Office OTA.

• Timeline & scope: Work runs through July 2026 in the National Capital Region, with $2M obligated up-front.

• Why it matters: It’s OpenAI’s first formal DoD award—cementing that frontier models will increasingly sit at the core of U.S. defense modernization.

🚀 Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s AI pep-talk

• TLDR: Amazon already has 1,000+ Gen-AI apps in flight—from Alexa+ to a shopping “Buy for Me” agent and code-writing QCLI.

• Agentic future: Jassy predicts “billions of agents” will change how we work, pushing Amazon to operate “like the world’s largest start-up.”

• Job impact: He foresees smaller corporate head-counts as AI boosts efficiency, while new roles emerge around agent building.

• Why it matters: When the planet’s biggest retailer reshapes org charts around AI, every enterprise has to reconsider its own.

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