Disney will invest $1 billion in OpenAI and officially license its characters for use in its Sora video generator. The deal comes amid a heated debate in Hollywood over how the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence is changing the entertainment industry and impacting the rights of content creators.
Under the three-year licensing agreement, Sora users will be able to create short videos for social media featuring over 200 characters from the Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars universes . However, the terms of the agreement stipulate specific restrictions: the images and voices of actors associated with these franchises will not be used.
This is OpenAI’s most significant move towards Hollywood following the controversial launch of Sora and a series of complaints about its generative video tool. The service has already been at the center of controversy over possible copyright infringement and the appearance of videos featuring celebrities in provocative and offensive images.
Racist images of Martin Luther King Jr. and the use of Malcolm X, which his daughter called hurtful and disrespectful, sparked particular controversy, prompting the company to begin more severely restricting such requests.
Disney itself is also actively protecting its intellectual property from uncontrolled use in generative services. This fall, the company filed a stringent lawsuit against Character.AI, accusing it of copyright infringement for its chatbots based on Disney characters.
Subsequently, according to industry publications, Disney lawyers asked Google to stop using the studio’s characters in its AI systems . The new contract with OpenAI aims to make character development a contractual and manageable matter.
Disney CEO Bob Iger presented the collaboration as a way to combine the company’s recognizable stories with the capabilities of generative AI and expand narrative formats, while preserving the protection of creators and their works. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, for his part, promoted the agreement as an example of how tech companies and the entertainment industry can build a more responsible partnership, balancing innovation with respect for creative work and copyright laws.
Disney will go beyond licensing Sora characters and become a major OpenAI customer. The company plans to use OpenAI APIs to create new digital products and internal tools, as well as distribute ChatGPT to employees. A separate section of user-generated videos created in Sora will appear in the Disney+ service catalog, strengthening the integration of generative videos into the media holding company’s ecosystem.
The deal demonstrates how a major studio and an AI developer are trying to set new standards at a time when screenwriters, actors, visual effects artists, and others in the industry are protesting the replacement of human labor with algorithms and the use of their likenesses without consent.
In this context, the agreement between Disney and OpenAI is becoming a test case to see whether it is possible to reconcile the commercial benefits of artificial intelligence with real guarantees for content creators.
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