Disney and Universal Team Up to Sue AI Firm Midjourney 🚨

Welcome to another edition of Horizon AI,

The first major legal showdown between Hollywood studios and an AI company has started. Disney and Universal are suing AI image generator Midjourney, accusing it of producing “endless” ripoffs.

Let’s take a look!

Read Time: 4.5 min

Here's what's new today in the Horizon AI

• Disney, Universal Sue Midjourney for Copyright Infringement

• Meta Introduces New "World Model" V-JEPA 2

• AI Tutorial: How to create PDFs in Grok

• AI Tools to check out

• AI Findings/Resources

• The Latest in AI and Tech 💡

AI News

MIDJOURNEY

Disney, Universal Sue Midjourney for Copyright Infringement

The copyright lawsuit was filed in a Los Angeles federal court and claims that Midjourney pirated the libraries of the two Hollywood studios to generate and distribute “endless unauthorized copies” of their famed characters.

Details:

• The complaint describes Midjourney as “the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” and argues that it doesn’t matter whether the work is created with AI or any other technology — “piracy is piracy.”

• The studios also claim the AI company ignored their requests to stop infringing on their copyrighted works and to take measures to halt such image generation.

• The lawsuit includes several images alleged to be examples of copyright infringement, featuring characters such as Shrek, Princess Elsa, WALL-E, and more. Some examples are shown above.

• When asked if the lawsuit could endanger the startup’s future, Midjourney CEO David Holz responded, “I think Midjourney is going to be around for a very long time.”

The studios’ case joins a growing number of lawsuits filed against AI firms in San Francisco and New York. However, it is the first time major Hollywood companies have taken legal action, something that could upend the entertainment industry.

Source

META

Meta Introduces New "World Model" V-JEPA 2

Meta is rolling out a new open-source AI “world model” designed to help AI agents better understand 3D environments and the movement of physical objects.

Details:

• The company claims V-JEPA 2 can understand, predict, and plan in the physical world. For example, it can recognize that a ball rolling off a table will eventually fall, or that an object hidden from view is still present.

• The new model builds on the V-JEPA model Meta released last year, improving action prediction and world modeling capabilities that help robots interact with unfamiliar objects and environments to complete tasks.

• The company also shared three new benchmarks “to help the research community evaluate how well their existing models learn and reason about the world using video.”

Meta is betting on these “world models” to power the machines of the future, such as delivery robots and self-driving cars, which would need to understand their surroundings and adapt to unpredictable environments and tasks in real time.

Source

AI Tutorial

How to create PDFs in Grok

How To Create a PDF in Grok (It’s This Simple)

1. Go to Grok.com on a desktop browser and log in.

2. Type the prompt for the content you want in your PDF.

Example: “Write a guide for job seekers on how to use ChatGPT to improve their resumes.”

3. Once you have a reply, just type “Turn this into a PDF.”

4. You’ll get a preview of your pdf.

5. You can ask Grok to make changes, like adding a new section.

6. You can also click the CODE button at the top to edit the HTML yourself. When you go back to the preview, you’ll see the changes you just made.

7. Once you’re done, download the PDF.

AI Tools to check out

⭐ Indigo: Build custom AI tools and workflows to supercharge your team's productivity.

👀 Agentplace: create intelligent agents, AI apps and agentic websites by writing plain text.

🦾 DataMorf: Streamline your data workflows and automate pipelines effortlessly with real-time, AI-powered transformations.

🥐 Bakery: Easily fine-tune & monetize your AI models with one click.

🧊 Quadratic: Chat with your data, connect databases, and visualize results in a code-friendly all in one tool.

AI Findings/Resources

📝 12 open-source tools every developer should know

🚨 Jailbreak for the new o3-pro model

🤔 OpenAI seems to be making a very familiar, very cynical choice - Opinion

🔮 Vibe coding is coming for engineering jobs

👀 How to build your own AI bot to answer questions about your documents

The latest in AI and Tech

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Google appoints DeepMind exec as chief AI architect

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that Koray Kavukcuoglu will help shape product strategy and “accelerate how we bring our world-leading models into our products.” Kavukcuoglu will reportedly remain Google DeepMind CTO while taking on this new role.

Nvidia and Perplexity team up

The chip giant and AI search startup are partnering to offer specialized open-source AI models for European users, which will be available through Perplexity’s platform.

Google launches nine new Home app features

Google has quietly launched nine new features for its Home app (now available via public preview), including picture-in-picture support for Nest Cams on Google TV, new Gemini smart home controls, and more.

TotalEnergies to collaborate with Mistral AI to increase the application of AI in its multi-energy strategy

The collaboration will bring together experts from both organizations to develop and apply AI-driven solutions across the energy sector. They aim to create an AI-powered assistant to help TotalEnergies develop new projects, recommend ways to reduce environmental impact, and enhance customer support solutions.

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Gina 👩🏻‍💻