Crossroads Roundup: Disney Sues Midjourney, the Venus of Kolobrzeg, and French Museums to Levy Tourist "Tariff"

This month's news in art, archaeology, culture, and more.

A major lawsuit in the ongoing controversy over AI “art”:

This month, Walt Disney Co. and NBC Universal have filed a joint copyright infringement lawsuit against Midjourney, an image generator that uses artificial intelligence. Midjourney, like ChatGPT (owned by OpenAI) and other AI platforms, trains its models on copyrighted images and text, then allows users to generate images whose styles are often copied from the work of living artists. Last year, Midjourney reported $300 million in revenue.

In their lawsuit, Disney and NBC state that Midjourney blatantly misappropriated the use of copyrighted images, including from major franchises such as Star Wars and Marvel: “Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism.” In a statement to the New York Times, Disney’s general counsel Horacio Gutierrez added, “We are bullish on the promise of A.I. technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity. But …