The war on piracy has always been a game of whack-a-mole for Hollywood. First came pirate DVDs, then the advent of streaming that never quite eliminated the gray zones of unauthorized sharing. Now, a new frontier has opened up, in the form of generative AI apps that can produce branded characters at the push of a button. Over the past month, Disney, NBCUniversal, and Warner Bros Discovery have all filed lawsuits against two companies they accuse of “breathtaking” copyright theft—US-based Midjourney and Chinese start-up MiniMax. These cases cut to the heart of a question that will define the next decade of entertainment: who controls the line of fair use in the age of generative AI? In June 2025, Disney and…