Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and will bring characters such as Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and Luke Skywalker to the artificial intelligence company’s Sora video generation tool, in a three-year licensing deal announced on Thursday. The agreement makes the Walt Disney Co. the first major content licensing partner for Sora, which uses generative artificial intelligence to create short videos from text prompts. Under the three-year licensing deal, fans will be able to use Sora to generate and share videos based on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters, with some user-generated Sora videos to be made available on the Disney+ streaming service.
Artificial intelligence video generators like Sora have impressed with their ability to quickly create realistic clips, but their rise has fueled concerns about “AI slop,” deepfakes, misinformation and the erosion of human-created work. In announcing the deal, Disney and OpenAI said they are committed to responsible use of artificial intelligence that protects user safety and creator rights. “This agreement shows how AI companies and creative leaders can work together responsibly to promote innovation that benefits society, respect the importance of creativity, and help works reach vast new audiences,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said. Disney CEO Robert Iger said the partnership will “extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works.” As part of the arrangement, Disney will become a “major customer” of OpenAI, use its technology to build new products, tools and services, and roll out ChatGPT for employees.
At the same time, Disney is escalating a parallel fight over how its content is used to train artificial intelligence models. Also Thursday, Disney sent Google a cease and desist letter demanding that the tech company stop using Disney content without permission to feed and train its artificial intelligence models, including its Veo video generator and Imagen and Nano Banana image generators. Disney accused Google of “infringing Disney’s copyrights on a massive scale,” citing examples of characters from Star Wars, The Simpsons, Deadpool and The Lion King that it says Google’s artificial intelligence systems easily generated, and asserted that Google has been “intentionally amplifying” the problem by distributing infringing content across services such as YouTube. Iger said Disney had been in conversations with Google for months but, because those talks “didn’t bear fruit,” the company felt it had no choice but to issue the legal demand. Disney said Google has not taken measures to mitigate the problem and concluded in the letter that “Google’s mass infringement of Disney’s copyrighted works must stop,” while Google did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
