Disney Issues Cease-and-Desist to Google Following OpenAI Deal

Disney announced a billion dollar agreement with OpenAI this morning regarding the use of its characters, and Google may need to reconsider its strategy.

along with licensing its iconic imagery and characters for use with Sora – OpenAI’s combination of an AI video generation tool and social network – Disney is challenging Google’s use of its intellectual property in its own generative AI tools. as reported by Ars Technica, Disney issued a cease-and-desist letter to Google on Wednesday evening, hours before the Sora agreement became official, accusing the company of copyright infringement and demanding an immediate halt to using Disney characters for both training data and within applications like YouTube.

Disney’s letter specifically names franchises like Frozen, The Lion King, Moana, The Little Mermaid, Lilo and Stitch, Toy Story, Star Wars, and the MCU as intellectual property Google’s AI tools currently generate. The company’s legal team requests Google “immediately cease further copying, publicly displaying, publicly performing, distributing, and creating derivative works of Disney’s copyrighted characters,” specifically, but not limited to, YouTube and its related platforms like Shorts.