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The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora

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https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/11/disney-openai-sora-character...

> As part of the agreement, Disney will make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI, and receive warrants to purchase additional equity.

I say this with no snark or disdain: Sam has mastered the art of the flywheel.

Re licensed ai videos, if anyone wants to see the perspective the C-suites are being sold on, check out this episode of Belloni's The Town, in which they discuss the vision for AI + IP https://overcast.fm/+AA4DU9JreIE

1 month agoby postalcoder

I never thought this could happen, especially after the "Ghibli scandal". OpenAI has pulled a majestic business move. They got to allow people to generate Disney characters without issue AND will give 1 billion dollars to OpenAI?

Now the internet will be flooded by Disney character's videos, and since they don't have to pretend they didn't train on their intellectual property anymore I'm really curious to see where this will bring us.

We should rethink copyright btw.

1 month agoby gekoxyz

I read this as "Disney approached OpenAI and threatened to sue them into oblivion --> OpenAI negotiated that Disney will use OpenAI internally for free, and will buy $1B of equity to have an ownership stake in the company".

Disney comes out pretty good from this one; they're going to have a ton of people using the service to create all sorts of stuff that will—on the whole—increase brand awareness and engagement with Disney.

OpenAI comes out pretty good from this, with a customer who's probably not paying much (if anything), $1B additional runway, but reduced ownership of the company.

I think Disney is the winner here.

1 month agoby eykanal

I watched an interesting video about how the look of cinema has changed dramatically with the advent of green screen sets, CG, VFX, and a move away from large scale on-location scenes. This feels like we're inching towards a new era of cinema that has lost its charm in being real. Maybe I'm just getting old and this is what everyone seems to like (or can't relate to the charm of older cinema from the 90s).

https://youtu.be/tvwPKBXEOKE?si=EYdu543vJlAjdX5c

Another thought I had. Is there no desire to make a modern film that still intentionally looks like an old Pixar film. Less poly. Simpler lighting. No fancy physics effects. In the same way PS1 graphics are popular now.

1 month agoby famahar

AI has driven the corporate suites of these companies insane.

> As part of the agreement, Disney will make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI, and receive warrants to purchase additional equity.

I don't know what kind of hypnosis tricks Sam Altman pulls on these people but the fact that Disney is giving money to OpenAI as part of a deal to give over the rights to its characters is absolutely baffling.

OpenAI and ChatGPT have been pioneering but they're absolutely going to be commoditized. IMO there is at least a 50:50 chance OpenAI equity is going to be next to worthless in the future. That Disney would give over so much value and so much cash for it... insane.

1 month agoby afavour

This will not end well for Disney, there were certain historical characters removed from Sora 2 because people kept making racist videos that are hard to censor, and it became increasingly unhinged. This feels like another circular investment where Disney is hoping to make money back I'm sure. On the other hand, assuming they do the freemium stuff, I look forward to making a few videos of my daughters favorite Disney princesses "talking" to her.

1 month agoby giancarlostoro

$1B, how many hours of runway does that buy.

1 month agoby zorked

The cancer spreads.

1 month agoby wiseowise

“In other words, Glazier doesn't want these lawsuits to get rid of Midjourney and protect creative workers from the threat of AI – he just wants the AI companies to pay the media companies to make the products that his clients will use to destroy creators' livelihoods. He wants there to be a new copyright that allows creators to decide whether their work can be used to train AI models, and then he wants that right transferred to media companies who will sell it to AI companies in a bid to stop paying artists <…>”

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/18/im-not-bad/

1 month agoby strogonoff

What mad world are we living in where Disney — Disney — is paying someone to lose control over its IP?

1 month agoby otterley

I think I'm the only one kind of stoked about this. My kiddos are going to LOVE making short films with their favorite Disney Princesses.

1 month agoby pantsforbirds

There is no way the character licensing survives an hour of contact with the public, unless it is _extremely_ restricted. I can't imagine a worse job than trying to "curate" the torrent of sewage that is going to get created. Deadpool is pretty much the only Disney-owned property this makes sense for.

And I say this as someone who _likes_ using Sora.

1 month agoby empath75

Comments all act like Disney is giving them $1B, but they are essentially producing unlimited Disney IP content through OpenAI, and get any value boost on their ownership investment, and get the Disney stock bounce from the deal coverage. I don't really like the deal on the face value of what we know, but will admit there is huge potentially upside and it's very cheap relative to a lot of other company AI "strategies"

1 month agoby andrew_lettuce

Others have pointed out the problems of trolls generating racist or otherwise controversial content using Disney characters and this being short-sighted by Disney, but I think this could just be another case of "no such thing as bad PR".

People will undoubtedly generate reprehensible things using these characters, and I think that's exactly what Disney wants because it's an easy way to make their characters go viral.

1 month agoby ossner

This is “impressive” negotiation from Altman. Can’t imagine this being good for Disney.

1 month agoby sd9

The collapse in production costs from AI video is going to change the volume and quality of what gets made. We’re headed for a world where studios and small teams alike can produce work that would have required a Game of Thrones budget not long ago. The pipeline for high end series and films is about to get a lot bigger, and the pace of experimentation is going to jump

1 month agoby OldGreenYodaGPT

In the meanwhile...

Google should demand another $1bn from Disney to crush the lawsuit

https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/11/disney-hits-google-with-ce...

1 month agoby lz400

> As part of this new, three-year licensing agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing from a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars, including costumes, props, vehicles, and iconic environments. In addition, ChatGPT Images will be able to turn a few words by the user into fully generated images in seconds, drawing from the same intellectual property. The agreement does not include any talent likenesses or voices.

Is there a list of allowed characters? Or are we just supposed to "spin the wheel" and deal with whatever results are returned? Or will these characters be selected instead of using natural language?

1 month agoby josefresco

Walt Disney would be tossing and turning in his grave as his legacy is destroyed by these arseholes

1 month agoby darthvaden

I wonder if this will weaken Disney's suit against Midjourney.

A tenant of seeking damages in a copyright complaint is the loss of control over how the intellectual property is used, and the potential damage done to the intellectual property by those who are not the rights holder. However this agreement demonstrates that they're not only willing to give up control (and allow content to be created without their vetting), but that they'd even financially contribute the acceleration of such through a very large initial investment with a carve out to contribute even more down the road.

I was aiming to write a counterpoint here, but so far many are quickly debunked by Disney being the company that is the financial backer of the agreement.

1 month agoby quitit

While it's not explicitly stated, I'm sure what is actually happening here is:

Disney buys OpenAI equity.

OpenAI uses the cash to pay Disney licensing fees, and buying hardware for Disney's use.

Whether it's bubble is up to the reader's interpretation.

1 month agoby raincole

Article makes it sound like Disney is just now rolling out ai for their employees but they’ve had access to it for a long time now. Disney has also been hiring for various AI positions for a bit.

1 month agoby dawnerd

This is the most circular of the circular funding deals. All the bubble signs are blaring it’s just a game of chicken now until the crash. I just don’t know if it is months or years.

1 month agoby Mistletoe

This deal establishes a clear dichotomy: Disney/OpenAI as the "Walled Garden" of premium IP vs. the "Open Bazaar" of mass distribution.

Google is now backed into a corner. To keep YouTube relevant against this alliance, they can't rely on tech alone—they need comparable IP. I expect them to immediately start courting Sony Pictures or Universal to fill that gap.

It’s essentially a battle between "Exclusivity" and "Scale".

1 month agoby 578_Observer

With numbers like this, it feels like OpenAI is selling at this point the value of an IPO if everyone consolidates around OpenAI more than on the competitive value of its product.

For every extra company they get effectively exclusive usage with the more believable the strategy becomes. As it wouldn't be the first time that beating out competitors in enterprise distribution led to users making what they are used to using at work what they use personally.

1 month agoby rifty

Surely OpenAI should be paying Disney for the rights to their content. What an upside down period we are living in.

1 month agoby tonyedgecombe

So the big fatso corporations all rally behind AI.

I don't like this. I don't dispute that AI has some useful use cases, but there are tons of time-wasters, such as fake videos generated on youtube. So when they now autogenerate everything, the quality will further go downwards but they will claim it will go upwards. Well, what may go up are the net profits. I don't think the quality will really go upwards. They also kind of create a monopoly here. Only other big corporations can break in - and they won't because it is easier to share the profits in the same market in a guaranteed manner. Quite amazing that this can happen. Who needs courts anymore when the base system can be gamified?

Then there is also the censorship situation. If you keep on censoring stuff, you lose out information. I see this on youtube where Google censors cuss words. This leads to rubbish bleeps every some seconds. Who wants to hear that? It's so pointless.

1 month agoby shevy-java

I see a lot of "mickey mouse" but if this is Disney IP, then it includes Star Wars and Marvel, no?

You can literally make your own Marvel movie now! Legally!

1 month agoby blobbers

I'm genuinely stunned they're giving OAI money.

1 month agoby tossit444

1 month agoby worldsavior

I opened this article expecting to read that OpenAI was somehow delivering cash or in-kind payment to Disney as a means of appeasing the copyright beast.

Colour me surprised to see that it's Disney that are handing out the cash in this arrangement.

However with further reading the answer seems clearer: Disney will certainly be using OpenAI's video technology to reduce their production costs, and for the amount of content Disney create this agreement seems mutually beneficial.

1 month agoby quitit

Not that I expect any rational thought from Disney, but the race to the bottom has started. If anyone can make a video with Disney characters, their value goes to zero.

Maybe there is something more behind this deal that is not reported? For example, Disney is waiting for OpenAI bankruptcy and then wants to get it for cheap while having its foot in the door?

1 month agoby bgwalter

> Walt Disney has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Alphabet's Google, CNBC reported on Thursday.

1 month agoby MallocVoidstar

For everyone concerned about the AI systems being trained on copyrighted material: this was always the end-game of that argument. Once the technology was proven out to be useful, someone with a huge IP portfolio was going to slam that portfolio directly into the training data to get their own copyright-unencumbered AI.

1 month agoby shadowgovt

As a place to park some cash, sure. But if I were running Disney there would be no character deal and I would need some kind of proprietary technology license that keeps certain AI improvements out of the hands of my competitors.

Disney really giving away the store here.

1 month agoby pinebox

The deal look unbalanced. Could it be that 1. Disney wants/needs to use Gen AI and 2. Disney cannot use a model that was trained to prevent their IP? Therefore they have to pick one partner and unblock their IP for this model?

1 month agoby lugu

Presumably, being able to use Sora to generate some pictures or videos involving Disney characters does not mean being able to actually distribute those pictures or videos, right? Those are still copyrighted characters.

1 month agoby schrototo

Not surprising in the least. If AI content can be monetized, I would imagine the struggling Hollywood set to be champing at the bit to participate.

I suspect their ongoing concern is just their IP/brands/characters being misused. Spielberg is next

1 month agoby mvkel

Iger and Altman on CNBC at 10:30.

1 month agoby tiahura

Oh the memes

1 month agoby seydor

Lot of the anti AI crowd hoped Disney would side with them and Disney IP appearing in models would be the thing to bring it all down, thinking copyright overreach was the lesser evil to use to get their way.

Wonder how they feel about this.

1 month agoby whywhywhywhy

Is this their YouTube goes legit moment? i.e. Disney get paid (by indirect means so far) for characters on OpenAI but not (yet) Gemini?

If this includes exclusivity deals it could be big.

1 month agoby fidotron

$1B sounds huge, I don't understand what Disney has to gain. Is this only to have some control over the videos generated on Sora with their IP?

1 month agoby dutchCourage

Hopefully I'll have enough time to make a proper sequel to 'Wreck it Ralph' before it gets shut down due to the obvious risks.

1 month agoby j-kent

This seems like a net negative for Disney and is what, like a month more of runway for OpenAI?

Doesn't Sora basically lose money at an enormous rate?

1 month agoby XorNot

Putting aside feelings on AI, and also putting aside worst case scenarios of the kind of content (which will happen regardless of what they promise), I think this is a terrible move for the brand.

Content saturation works out very poorly for IP holders. The value of your brand reduces dramatically , and you reduce excitement for new releases.

This is the company that had to walk back its plans to saturate streaming and theaters with their content because they ruined the hype for Star Wars and Marvel content. Two of the most beloved franchises!

This is just going to make that worse when ever social media feed will be blanketed by even more slop.

Unless the gambit is that they expect merch sales to go up, or they have a way to guarantee a cut of any used content. I’m sure there are some IP infringement lawyers who have basically secured a life time of work with this announcement.

1 month agoby dagmx

This feels like the moment big media finally decided that if they can't stop generative AI, they might as well monetize it

1 month agoby RataNova

Disney witnessed AI boosting Studio Ghibli’s cultural impact and relevance and decided to invest big in OpenAI, not surprising.

1 month agoby ojr

Congrats Disney. You just sold out every actual animator you pretended to care about.

Sure, go ahead and downvote me.

1 month agoby DrewADesign

I wonder how the various creative guilds will respond. Seems like they are stabbing their team in the back on this one.

1 month agoby mrdependable

There's a Kingdom Hearts joke in there somewhere, but I don't know enough of the lore to make it.

1 month agoby neallindsay

Disney shareholders, feel free to make images of Iger, Mickey, and Br'er Rabbit lighting piles on money on fire.

1 month agoby dfedbeef

Are they trying to make AI outputs copywritreable? If so, the deal is dispicable.

1 month agoby economistbob

Will ChatGPT generate the Star Wars scripts from now on?

[Ahem… And can it make them interesting?]

1 month agoby lolive

OpenAI is my least favorite AI company and Disney is (recently) among my least favorite entertainment conglomerates. Sounds like a match made in heaven. Good luck with the investment.

1 month agoby lunias

>> Disney and OpenAI affirm a shared commitment to responsible use of AI that protects the safety of users and the rights of creators.

Wow so Sora Slop is coming to payed Disney+?

1 month agoby mynti

That's a great way for OpenAI to keep Disney's lawyers away.

1 month agoby amelius

Is this some kind of pre-AI crash long game? Does that make any sense?

1 month agoby arichard123

Seems @sama has stumbled onto a pretty good business strategy - unleash something that massively infringes on copyright into the world, then take it back and add “guardrails” and then ~~extort~~ sell it back to the person you infringed on their copyright in the first place.

absolutely disgusting behavior

I can't put into words how much I despise @sama, it would probably get me banned from every corner of the internet.

Also... f*ck Disney for falling for this.

1 month agoby throwaway613745

does disney think a future is coming where the company who owns the model may be able to claim copyright on anything it’s model creates?

because that’s the only way this makes sense to me.

1 month agoby toofy

So we're soon going to see Sora-generated Disney movies?

1 month agoby HarHarVeryFunny

Soras not even the main character, it's Roxas

1 month agoby RobRivera

> Agreement will make a selection of these fan-inspired Sora short form videos available to stream on Disney+.

I actually think this is genius.

The next Spielberg might be some poor kid in a third-world country who can create a global hit using this tech.

Among the millions of slop videos generated, some might be the next Baby Shark, etc.

I've seen some Star Wars fan fiction created using AI that is truer to the original Star Wars than the most recent trilogy.

This is a chance for Disney to take the best of the user generated content, with high quality AI generated animation, and throw it on Disney+ to get free content for their streaming platform.

My guess is that's the gamble here. Worst-case scenario at the end of three years they just shut it down.

It's really the professionals who get paid to generate content for Disney that should be worried about this deal. This could be how AI causes them to lose their jobs.

1 month agoby ijidak

Awesome! Can't wait to see what people create.

1 month agoby nba456_

How about picture gen though on Dall-E?

It is so infuriating to get content block on ChatGPT for pretty much any fairy tale that has had a Disney related adaptation.

Try getting a Grimm's 19th century Snow White illustrations. You can not because the Disney crap supersedes it.

In fact you can not get a Snow White illustration of any kind on ChatGPT.

I can not figure out any prompts that would draw using public domain knowledge.

Same goes for a pirate fighting a flying boy - no good.

New one this week was when I tried to draw a border around my daughter's picture of a Poppy from Trolls(That's Dreamworks but same problem).

The actual copyrighted Poppy appeared in the border half way down the generation and then of course content block appeared.

What is hilarious though that ChatGPT will profusely apologize and provide extremely detailed instructions in setting up local Stable Diffusion as an alternative...

1 month agoby sireat

we're cooked

1 month agoby myjumpingsocks

Shouldn't OpenAI be paying Disney?

1 month agoby dboreham

Iger and Altman on CNBC at 10:30.

1 month agoby tiahura

My immediate thought: when does the copyright on Mickey expire? Didn’t it happen already?

1 month agoby rcarmo

Bob Iger: Disney’s OpenAI Deal “Does Not In Any Way” Threaten Creatives

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/bob...

1 month agoby ChrisArchitect

1B down the toilet

1 month agoby thatgerhard

Well I guess the best outcome is that the AI bubble bursts. Gonna be way worse if it is actually legit...

1 month agoby ferguess_k

The technology is still immature.

I mean no one here would be surprised if Disney and OpenAI have trouble preventing misuse -- say, Disney-branded Hentai.[a]

Can Disney and OpenAI reliably prevent misuse?

---

[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentai

1 month agoby cs702

First take: ew more ai generated slop

Second take: well I guess the blame lays with us for consuming it and reinforcing its creation

Third take: content creation becomes cheaper, allowing for more creative risks to be taken

Fourth take: this is a net-good because we see new creative ideas being attempted at low sunk cost

1 month agoby mvkel

OpenAI is using a page from 2010's Facebook playbook. They know their valuation is hyper inflated, so they are using those crazy valuations to buy stuff with equity (just like Facebook bought WhatsApp with private stock with crazy valuations).

1 month agoby jpadkins

Disney making a tech investment. Just the history of Disney and tech should make you roll your eyes: Starwave, Infoseek, Maker Studio, Playdom (I think Bamtech helped with Disney+, so maybe won't count that)

1 month agoby georgeecollins

They should have licensed the technology to automate the process of making live-action remakes...

This deal just guarantees we'll get to see some Mickey Mouse QAnon shit

1 month agoby LarsDu88

Extortion

1 month agoby testfrequency

For anyone confused by this, what you're probably forgetting is that children make no distinction between slop and high quality content. You know all those bad 3D knock-off YouTube videos of that everyone was in a moral panic about a few years ago? Disney wasn't upset those were damaging their brand. They were upset that they weren't making any money from them. But they just found a way to undercut all the sweatshops in Bangladesh pumping that stuff out: recruit children to make videos for children.

1 month agoby maplethorpe

That's some serious FOMO.

1 month agoby epolanski

Wait, so let me get this straight.

Altman got Disney to pay OpenAI, via an investment, for Sora -- which was likely trained on and used to generate infringements of all kinds of their copyrighted material.

And then Disney sends Google a Cease & Desist for using its copyrighted material, not only restricting what people can do with Google's AI image generators, but which could potentially also force Google to retrain all their models without Disney content.

Very likely Disney will reach a licensing deal with Google, which would conveniently finance Disney's investment in OpenAI.

And all this on the heels of the coup where Altman simultaneously signed a deal with Samsung and SK Hynix to lock up 40% of the world's DRAM supply, effectively cornering a key component for AI training hardware.

As I've said before: All these others are playing Capitalism. Altman out there playing Game of Thrones.

/popcorn

1 month agoby keeda

Disney is pretty much over so why not

1 month agoby neuroelectron

Have no fear! The free market of AI slop is here!

1 month agoby LogicFailsMe

Oof.

1 month agoby solumunus

Slop, but agreed upon slop.

1 month agoby gregjw

wtf are we doing, man?

1 month agoby mervz

Perhaps.... functionality will only be available to paid accounts/integrations. OpenAI will be contractually bound to report offensive content, Disney Lawyers will get the direct contact details via the paid account to know the user and sue.

1 month agoby illwrks

I keep wondering about one thing: maybe Disney isn’t paying for the technology at all — maybe they’re paying for a spot in the future. If generative video becomes as common as social media, AI models will be the new TV channels, and whoever controls the prime shelf space wins. In that sense, this billion isn’t a fee for Sora it’s the price of having Disney’s front row booth in a new world of storytelling. So the real question isn’t why is Disney paying? but who’s going to own the shelves in this new story marketplace?

1 month agoby artur44