An agreement between Disney and OpenAI – Google’s biggest AI rival – was announced on Thursday, with Disney investing $1 billion in OpenAI while approving the use of its characters in output by the Sora family of video models. According to Deadline, Disney’s cease and desist letter to Google was delivered on Wednesday, before the OpenAI deal was announced.
Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC that the cease-and-desist letter comes after previous talks with Google about this content were inconclusive.
According to the trades, at least some of the content mentioned in the Disney cease-and-desist order was produced with Google’s Veo. Google was apparently hosting content from supporting Marvel Cinematic Universe character Deadpool, as well as IP from the Star Wars and Simpsons franchises. According to Variety, Mickey Mouse was also on the list of Disney properties slated to be closed.
According to anecdotal evidence gleaned from Reddit posts, there was an episode about six months ago in which Veo’s copyright restrictions were briefly relaxed, and infringement – or at least infringement-adjacent material – was running rampant. Demanding the removal of Marvel content, if it were something like this video (which I’m not going to embed here for reasons that should be obvious) it would be a clear case of Disney defending its copyrights.
It gets a little complicated when you bring Mickey Mouse into the picture. As part of the public domain, Mickey Mouse doesn’t actually belong to Disney. He is yours and mine. But certain aspects of their use are trademarked by Disney (which can be thought of more as a way to prevent consumer confusion than some long-standing copyright claw-back). Additionally, by my count, only the Mickey Mouse material from the first 15 Mickey Mouse films is ever in the public domain.
Therefore, content that is mixed with Disney’s Mickey Mouse trademark, or is based on a work still covered by Disney’s copyright, may still be unsafe. This video, also posted on Reddit about six months ago, shows the character in a Mickey Mouse costume having what looks like some kind of reality TV-inspired conflict with a human woman at a Disney park that could fall into one of these categories.
According to OpenAI, its licensing deal with Disney will last for three years, and will include user-generated AI videos based on “more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters” and some of this content will be used as programming on Disney+. I can’t easily imagine anything Sora User could come up with that would be worth watching on a streaming service that would also let me watch extreme human achievements like the 1940s. pinocchio and 1961 one hundred and one dalmatianBut I will try to keep an open mind.
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