On the 16th, three major U.S. film companies—Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Universal Pictures—jointly filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court against Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm MiniMax, accusing the company of large-scale copyright infringement and the unauthorized use of famous movie characters in AI training and the production of videos for profit.
The three companies stated that MiniMax utilizes its "Hailuo AI" service to systematically copy popular characters, including "Spider-Man," "Batman," and the "Minions," to train AI models, subsequently generating unauthorized video content for commercial gain.
The film studios criticized MiniMax for adopting what they called a "pirated business model," circumventing legitimate licensing and seriously harming the rights of original works.
This case marks the first time major U.S. entertainment groups have launched a large-scale copyright lawsuit against a Chinese AI company. As recently as June this year, Disney and Universal Pictures initiated similar legal action against California-based AI company Midjourney, highlighting escalating global copyright conflicts sparked by AI-generated content.
The complaint points out that MiniMax operates "Hailuo AI," a Chinese AI image and video generation service that systematically and without authorization uses copyrighted content owned by the plaintiffs.
The studios are seeking not only the return of all profits obtained through infringement, but also statutory damages of up to $150,000 (about 630,000 ringgit) per infringed work.
The plaintiffs are also asking the court to issue a permanent injunction to prohibit MiniMax from continuing to use any protected content without authorization.
The complaint states that MiniMax disregards U.S. copyright law, directly using the plaintiffs’ key characters in its AI services and severely infringing on intellectual property rights.