the studios sued Midjourney for AI theft. now discovery wants their receipts.

The studios came with receipts. Now Midjourney wants theirs.

Disney and Universal sued Midjourney in June 2025 for generating unlicensed Shreks and Bart Simpsons — up to $150,000 per intentional infringement. Warner Bros. joined in September, citing what it called “brazen imagery theft” of Batman and Superman lookalikes.

In discovery, Midjourney asked a federal court to force the studios to hand over internal AI records — training data, model weights, board decks, internal use logs, including what their own employees were prompting into Midjourney. A court in June already ordered limited disclosure: the studios must reveal “consumer-facing” AI use. Midjourney is appealing for everything. That question gets a hearing on August 17.

The studios called it a fishing expedition. That’s what you say when the other side is fishing in the right pond.

The theory is fair use: if the studios are training their own image-generating AI on unlicensed data for internal storyboarding, that cuts against the infringement claim. The studios’ own litigation may now be building Midjourney’s defense.

They didn’t get trapped. They built the trap.