Here is our latest review and assessment of major AI-related disputes in the media and entertainment sectors.
Our AI Litigation Tracker is prepared by McKool Smith principal Avery Williams in collaboration with AI and media expert Peter Csathy of Creative Media, a leading consulting firm specializing in AI, media, entertainment, and technology. The Tracker is also featured in Peter's weekly newsletter the brAIn.
1. Richard Kadrey, et al. v. Meta
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Last week, this case was related to the Entrepreneur Media, LLC v. Meta Platforms, LLC matter, but this week saw no new filings on the docket. The Court has asked that a Joint Case Management Statement be submitted by December 12th with a Case Management Conference to be held on December 19th by videoconference, so this coming week is likely to give us a better sense of how the introduction of this new party will influence the direction of the case.
2. SDNY Multi-District Litigation
Current Status: Amid a slow week, OpenAI drops several affirmative defenses. The approaching holidays brought a slow week. However, a few notable events did occur. In particular, OpenAI filed a joint stipulation with Plaintiffs to amend its Answers to the complaints filed by the various news Plaintiffs to remove their affirmative defenses claiming that OpenAI reasonably believed that the alleged acts were not infringement due to the fair use doctrine, because the alleged acts were de minimis, or because copyright claims were otherwise barred. It is not readily apparent why OpenAI has chosen to remove these defenses, but OpenAI still maintains its affirmative defenses that any alleged copyright was fair use.
Additionally, OpenAI’s motion for reconsideration following the Magistrate Judge’s order that they must produce 20 Million ChatGPT logs was denied. In denying its motion, Judge Stein found that OpenAI’s allegations that these logs were largely not relevant to the present disputes was not well-established and that OpenAI’s prior arguments regarding their relevance cut against their current arguments. The Court also pointed to OpenAI’s existing methods for anonymizing the outputs of its ChatGPT, alongside the additional protections afforded by the protective order in this matter, mitigated the privacy concerns that OpenAI raised.
Finally, Magistrate Judge Wang granted Plaintiffs’ motion to compel the re-collection of text and social media messages by OpenAI’s higher-ups, finding that personal counsel for Sam Altman and Greg Brockman had essentially performed an initial “privacy” review before OpenAI’s counsel performed a responsiveness review, which resulted in over-redaction of materials.
3. UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs (d/b/a Udio)
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Following a number of settlements, this week saw no notable new filings on the docket. Within the past month, Plaintiffs UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Atlantic Recording Corp., Rhino Entertainment Co., and Warner Music all filed stipulations of dismissal, leaving Sony Music Entertainment as the lone plaintiff in the case. A joint status conference previously set for December 12th has was cancelled, but a replacement conference has not yet been scheduled. Check back soon to see how the case continues forward.
4. UMG Recordings v. Suno
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. A month ago, UMG Recordings is pursuing the same amendments to its complaint in this matter as it did in UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs, adding additional claims regarding the circumvention of technological measures to download materials from YouTube. Suno then filed its sur-reply which argued that UMG has failed to distinguish between access controls and copy controls, stating that YouTube’s rolling cipher is the latter and thus that it is not a valid basis for circumvention claims.
The past few weeks have seen no notable new filings. Given the recent settlement between most of the parties in the Uncharted Labs case, it remains to be seen if these parties will also negotiate an agreement without further litigation.
5. Sarah Andersen et al. v. Stability AI, et al.
Current Status: Plaintiffs request additional custodians from DeviantArt. Three weeks ago, the parties filed another joint status report indicating that they have continued negotiating the production of training data, document production, and the addition of custodians. Although this week involved relatively few new filings, Plaintiffs and DeviantArt filed a joint dispute statement explaining its reasoning for requesting four witnesses from DeviantArt related machine learning and data engineering as custodians, stating that they possessed evidence that would show that DeviantArt stole the works of millions of artists to create a commercial product, DreamUp, an image generator based on artist data. DeviantArt denies that these witnesses were either uninvolved with DreamUp or only tangentially involved, and offered to provide just two of them as custodians as a compromise.
6. Reddit v. Anthropic
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. This case has been removed to the Northern District of California after it was originally filed in California state court. Reddit has requested that the case be remanded to state court, which Anthropic unsurprisingly opposes. About a month ago, previously-assigned Judge Susan Illston recused herself from the matter, which was then reassigned to Judge Trina Thompson. Given this reassignment, deadlines in the matter have been pushed back, with initial case management conference now set for December 18th and the hearing on Reddit’s motion to remand set for January 27th.
Recent weeks have seen little movement on the docket, however this week the parties certified that they had discussed alternative dispute resolution options and would prefer to discuss ADR selection at the case management conference. Despite the non-committal nature of the parties’ statements, this may indicate that a referral to a mediator may be on the horizon.
7. Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. v. Midjourney
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Four weeks ago, Plaintiffs and Midjourney filed a joint stipulation to consolidate this action with the related action involving Warner Bros. Additionally, two weeks ago, the Court ordered that the case be referred to a private mediator, with the alternative dispute resolution proceeding to be completed by August 19, 2026.
Nonetheless, the case is moving forward in the interim according to the pretrial schedule issued last week, which marks August 21, 2026 as the deadline to file a report relating to the outcome of mediation. Deadlines resume afterward, with non-expert discovery closing on September 21, 2026 and expert discovery closing November 9, 2026.
Note also that, following consolidation with the Warner Bros. case, this entry now tracks the progress of that dispute as well. This week it was also announced that Netflix intends to acquire Warner Bros. for over $80 billion. How, if at all, that will influence the case is so far unclear.
8. Hendrix v. Apple
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. As discussed previously, the parties and the Court agreed to relate the present case to another one filed against Apple by Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknick. Two weeks ago, the Court accepted another request to relate a case by Tasha Alexander against Apple. Given the addition of several new class members, the parties and Court have agreed to a modified timeline in which the collective plaintiffs will file applications for appointment of leadership by November 21st with responses due December 5th. A consolidated class complaint will be due 14 days after leadership is appointed.
9. Disney et al. v. Minimax & Hailuo AI
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. Disney, Universal, and Warner Brothers filed suit against AI companies offering video generation products which is similar to the one filed by Disney against Midjourney. The case has been assigned to Judge Stanley Blumenfeld and Magistrate Judge Charles Eick. So far, this case has not yet had any notable activity, but continue to check back and we will update you when it does.
10. Concord Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
Current Status: No major substantive developments this past week. As discussed in prior weeks, Anthropic has repeatedly attempted to get Plaintiffs to produce information related to their methods for inducing Claude to output lyrics which formed the basis of their complaint. This week, the Court set a hearing on that issue for December 16. Additionally, parties filed a joint stipulation asking that the December 30 hearing related to use of materials from the Bartz v. Anthropic lawsuit should be rescheduled to January 6th to accommodate counsel’s holiday schedules.