A Car Photography Archive Sues Midjourney

EVOX Productions LLC, which describes itself as the market-leading creator and licensor of automotive photography, has sued Midjourney in the US District Court for the Central District of California. The complaint alleges that tens of thousands of its copyrighted vehicle images were pulled from public datasets without licences and used as training data, and that watermarks and metadata were stripped before training. EVOX asks the court to halt the use and to order compensation; no figure has been disclosed.

The case differs from the studio suits Midjourney already faces from Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Those turn on characters and brands. This one turns on commercial photography itself. Catalogue car photography is highly standardised, with repeated angles, lighting and backgrounds, which makes such an archive unusually easy for a generative model to absorb. Midjourney maintains that training on copyrighted material is fair use. How the court treats the watermark-stripping claim will shape what comes next.