In a groundbreaking legal move, three major Hollywood film giants – Disney, Universal Studios, and Warner Bros. Studios – have accused the Chinese artificial intelligence company MiniMax of “deliberate and blatant” copyright infringement. This marks the first lawsuit brought against a Chinese AI company by Hollywood.
MiniMax, the target of the lawsuit, is a popular Chinese development company known for its AI video application, “Hailong AI.”
According to the Financial Times report on Tuesday (September 16), sources revealed that the three film companies believe that Hailong AI’s video production services pose a threat to the American film industry and are seeking the “maximum compensation allowed by law.”
The lawsuit includes several screenshots of MiniMax advertisements showing the use of well-known characters from American Hollywood movies, such as Darth Vader from Disney’s “Star Wars” and the Minions from Universal Studios, all featuring the branding of MiniMax’s Hailong AI.
Upon user input prompts, Hailong AI can generate images and videos of popular characters from specific scenes as requested.
The lawsuit alleges that the images and videos generated by Hailong AI contain “high-quality, downloadable” images and videos of copyrighted characters.
Furthermore, the film companies accuse MiniMax of using images of Hollywood characters to promote to American consumers, implying that they have obtained consent from the copyright owners.
The lawsuit claims that MiniMax’s official Instagram account used illegal copies of Warner Bros. movie “Joker” to advertise its services.
Headquartered in Shanghai, MiniMax is one of China’s leading large-scale language model startup companies, backed by investments from Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse Capital, and Alibaba.
Sources revealed that the lawsuit comes at a sensitive time for MiniMax as the company is planning to go public in Hong Kong.
MiniMax has yet to respond to media requests for comments.
Prior to the lawsuit, some American internet users on Reddit discussed China’s disregard for copyright laws, with speculations that MiniMax might be using the entire film library to train its AI, a practice deemed unthinkable by American companies.