Disney Licenses Play Dates for Mickey Mouse, ChatGPT in $1B OpenAI Deal

Sora users can legally make fan edits of themselves swimming next to Ariel, Disney’s mermaid celebrity, under a $1 billion deal that the entertainment giant announced yesterday with OpenAI. 

Video-generator Sora and ChatGPT got Disney CEO Bob Iger’s go-ahead to use more than 200 copyrighted characters across the universes of Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars. But any Ariel edits will be with the princess after she gave her voice to Ursula because the deal doesn’t include talent voices. 

Some user-generated Sora videos will make their way onto Disney+, and ChatGPT (which got an update yesterday) will become available to Disney employees. The tie-up could become a template for Hollywood, which in the past has pushed back against AI getting its hands on its precious IP. 

Joining the Dark Side

Disney has defined modern copyright law, lobbying Congress for decades to expand protections for its characters. The company’s known for suing anyone who violates those copyrights, including creators as small as an Etsy vendor that sold 200 Baby Yoda plushies. 

So it was no surprise that the House of Mouse also cracked down on AI companies, which built their models by scraping the internet without any concern for copyrights. Disney and Universal jointly sued image-generator Midjourney this summer (Warner Bros. Discovery later hopped in, too), and Disney sent a cease and desist letter to AI chatbot Character.AI in September. 

When OpenAI launched Sora this fall, and its users created celebrity deepfakes that flooded the web, Hollywood reacted: 

• Major talent agencies were quick to criticize the video platform. WME told OpenAI the company couldn’t use any of its clients, while CAA said it was a “significant risk,” and UTA called the tech “exploitation, not innovation.” The Motion Picture Association, meanwhile, said OpenAI needed to take immediate action to address copyright violations. 
• The union SAG-AFTRA and actor Bryan Cranston somewhat embraced the tech (like a side hug), coordinating with OpenAI to put up guardrails around how Sora could use actors’ names and likenesses. CAA and UTA praised the results of the team-up in October, suggesting a path forward for Hollywood’s relationship with the AI giant. 

Playing Favorites: OpenAI seems to have landed the leading role in Hollywood’s AI story. Disney on Wednesday sent a cease and desist letter to Google, CNBC reported, in which Disney alleged the tech giant violated its copyrights to train AI models. Still, Disney has always been quick to monetize trending tech, like when it invested $1.5 billion into Epic Games in a deal that brought Disney characters into the video game “Fortnite.”