Disney, Universal, WBD sue Chinese AI
September 17, 2025
Disney, Universal and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) have jointly filed suit against the Chinese creator of Hailuo AI a popular artificial intelligence video app, over what they call “wilful and brazen” copyright infringement.
The suit against MiniMax, which owns the ‘Hollywood studio in your pocket’, is the first of its kind against a Chinese AI company. The studios say the service is a threat to the US motion picture industry and are seeking the “maximum damages”.
The lawsuit includes several screenshots of MiniMax advertisements that feature some of the studios’ best-known characters. The images are generated when a user submits a text prompt for a popular character in a particular setting. The results, the companies allege, are “high quality, downloadable images and videos” using copyrighted characters.
They allege that MiniMax uses images of their characters to advertise the service to US consumers, which the studios claim falsely implies an endorsement by the copyright holders.
Shanghai-based MiniMax is one of China’s leading large language model start-ups, backed by HongShan — formerly Sequoia China — private equity group Hillhouse and Alibaba.
The lawsuit comes at a sensitive time for MiniMax, which is planning to list in Hong Kong.
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