Illustration: Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Disney/Getty Images
Renowned copyright tyrant Disney has now bowed to the AI industry and signed over its valuable intellectual property.
On Thursday, the entertainment conglomerate announced a new licensing agreement with OpenAI. This allows users to generate clips with Sora, OpenAI's video generation app that lets you deepfake your friends and celebrities using Disney's iconic characters and properties, which quickly became a factory for controversy and surreal memes.
sweeten the pot with the agreement thatsan's The first major licensing deal between OpenAI and a major Hollywood studio has already taken place, with Disney also making a staggering $1 billion investment in the ChatGPT maker.
The three-year deal includes more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar characters, and will allow users to generate depictions of Sora and ChatGPT sometime in 2026. Famous ones include Darth Vader, Cinderella, Iron Man, and Toy Story toys.
The companies claimed that the deal did not include the talent's likeness or voice. Only animated or illustrated versions of the characters mentioned above will be drawn.
“Through our collaboration with OpenAI, we will thoughtfully and responsibly expand the scope of storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their work,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement.
Readers, take note. The impending deluge of Disney AI slop will be so overwhelming that it will itself justify a flood myth as our successors pluck out the bones of our civilization.
That's certainly the future foresaw at Sora's launch in October. The app was clearly intended to allow people to deepfake their friends and participating celebrities into all sorts of ridiculous scenarios. But what really proved to be good about it was that it seemed to violate every conceivable entertainment quality. Sora users quickly churned out videos of SpongeBob cooking meth and dressing up as Nazi officers. There were countless depictions of different Pokémon, and a whole mini-trend of inserting Pikachu into famous movies was born.
In summary, if you try hard enough, or not at all, you can make Sora spit out almost any manga or video game character you want. In the most controversial setting a prompt could dream of. This went largely unacknowledged by OpenAI, but when Sora team leader Bill Peebles teased that fictional characters would soon be licensed, OpenAI hinted that it was only a matter of time before all of these potential copyright disasters were formally authorized.
It's worth noting that Sora has frequently been used to imitate performers and the characters they portray, despite Disney and OpenAI emphasizing that the actors' faces and voices are not included in the contract.
This raises another question. If character voices aren't available, what does AI-generated combinations of them actually look like? Will Darth Vader or Yoda be completely silent?
Other details raise eyebrows. As part of the agreement, Disney says fans will be able to watch a “curated selection” of Sora videos on its streaming service Disney+, bringing the lowest form of AI slop directly to viewers, many of whom are children. Disney also said it would become a “major customer of OpenAI” to use its AI to “build new products, tools, and experiences, including for Disney+, and bring ChatGPT to its workforce.”
Overall, the agreement represents a major turning point for an industry that has resisted rampant AI piracy, allowing it to profit from the use of the technology on its own terms. Disney is at the center of this, as recently as October issuing a cease and desist letter to chatbot platform Character.AI, demanding that it remove all AI companions that imitate its copyrighted characters. In June, Disney also sued the image and video AI tool Midjourney for alleged copyright infringement. And on the eve of announcing its new deal with OpenAI, Disney also sent a cease and desist order to Google, accusing the company of “massive” copyright infringement by training AI models on its own IP.
It's highly doubtful that Disney really needs the additional exposure from working with OpenAI, and it's also doubtful that it will be able to recoup its $1 billion investment. But it still claims control over that IP in other ways.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke enthusiastically about the deal.
“Disney is the global gold standard for storytelling, and we're excited to partner with Sora and ChatGPT Images to expand the ways people create and experience great content,” Altman said in a statement.
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