As part of an ongoing legal dispute with three Hollywood studios, AI startup Midjourney is seeking to compel those studios to reveal how they use AI themselves.

Disney and Universal sued Midjourney for alleged copyright infringement last year, noting that the startup’s image-generation models could create images of characters, such as Bart Simpson and Darth Vader, who are owned by the studios. A few months later, Warner Bros. sued Midjourney as well.

The startup argues that training its AI models on images of copyrighted characters is permitted under fair use.

The current dispute revolves around the documentation the studios will need to produce during the discovery process. A judge previously ruled that the studios would indeed have to provide information about their generative AI usage – but only when it led to “consumer-facing” videos and images.

In its latest filing, Midjourney seeks to overturn that limitation, arguing that it “unfairly” allows the studios “to cherry-pick only those documents they believe support their market harm claims while depriving Midjourney of documents that would support its defenses.”

Midjourney goes on to claim that the “documents [the studios] are withholding are precisely those that would reveal whether, behind closed doors, they are doing exactly what they are suing Midjourney for doing.”