Universal Issues Warning to AI Companies in Movie Credits

Take a closer look at “How to Train Your Dragon,” the live-action movie released in June. Embedded in the end credits of the movie is a warning: Universal Pictures, the major American film studio behind the film, will take legal action if any company or individual uses the film for AI training.

The end credit warning, which says that a movie “may not be used to train AI,” also appeared in “Jurassic World Rebirth,” released in July, and “The Bad Guys 2,” which came out in August, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Related: ‘Bottomless Pit of Plagiarism’: Disney, Universal File the First Major Hollywood Lawsuit Against an AI Startup

Alongside the message is a more standard one that states that the movie “is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries” and threatens “civil liability and criminal prosecution” if faced with “unauthorized duplication, distribution, or exhibition.”

Universal recently joined Walt Disney Pictures in taking legal action against an AI image-generating startup called Midjourney. In June, Disney and Universal filed a complaint accusing Midjourney of duplicating iconic characters from their copyrighted works in its AI outputs.

Midjourney made $300 million last year, partly by generating media containing copyrighted characters created by the studios, the complaint alleges. The document goes on to list characters like Hiccup from “How to Train Your Dragon” and Po from “Kung Fu Panda” as examples of Universal creations that Midjourney allegedly reproduced.

Related: Netflix Co-CEO Says the Company Used AI on a TV Show for the First Time: ‘Completed 10 Times Faster’

Universal Pictures generated $1.88 billion in box office revenue in the U.S. and Canada in 2024, a 3% decline from the previous year. Meanwhile, Disney was the top studio globally in 2024, bringing in $5.46 billion at the box office.

Instead of taking legal action against AI, other Big Eight film studios have begun to incorporate the technology into their movies. For example, Netflix disclosed last month that it used AI to generate footage for one of its shows for the first time. The Argentine science fiction show, “El Eternauta,” or “The Eternaut,” featured an AI-created scene showing a collapsing building.

Netflix claims to have completed the AI-generated scene “10 times faster” than if it had used standard tools.

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