In a move that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago, Disney, a company legendary for its aggressive protection of intellectual property, has struck a three-year licensing agreement with OpenAI to bring over two hundred of its beloved characters to Sora and ChatGPT. Sora is OpenAI’s text-to-video AI model and can create highly detailed videos with characters, motion, and sound. The deal represents a potentially groundbreaking moment for how copyright law intersects with artificial intelligence.
Starting in early 2026, users of Sora and ChatGPT will be able to generate short videos and images featuring certain Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters. The license covers animated characters, costumes, props, vehicles, and iconic environments, but does not include talent likenesses and voices (e.g. a user cannot use Robert Downey Jr.’s name, image, or likeness as Ironman). Disney will also invest a billion dollars in OpenAI and become a major customer, using OpenAI’s technology to develop new products for Disney+ while deploying ChatGPT for its employees.
Disney has previously sent cease and desist letters to Google claiming Google’s new AI models, such as nano banana pro, are infringing on Disney’s copyright on a “massive scale”. Disney, along with Universal and Warner Bros., had also filed lawsuits against Midjourney AI over similar infringement concerns, calling the AI company “a bottomless pit of plagiarism”. The apparent contradiction with this Open AI deal reveals what could be a shift in the evolving legal landscape. It’s possible that Disney’s move suggests that major content holders are deciding to license their content and get paid for it, rather than risking lengthy and costly legal battles.
As a result, the structure of the agreement offers a potential blueprint for future IP licensing in the AI era. Disney structured this agreement with certain, noteworthy restrictions. They have allowed their characters to be used, but not the voices or likenesses of the actors who portrayed them. Additionally, short-form social videos up to thirty seconds are permitted, but long-form content is not. This approach reflects the complex intersection of copyright, trademark, and right of publicity rights.
The creative community’s reaction has been mixed. SAG-AFTRA struck a cautious tone, noting it would monitor the deal to ensure compliance with contracts and laws protecting image, voice, and likeness. The Writers Guild of America was far more critical, calling the deal an apparent sanctioning of OpenAI’s “theft of our work” and promising to investigate how user-generated videos would draw on members’ creative output.
The Disney/OpenAI agreement won’t end debates about AI and copyright, but it may mark the beginning of a new phase in which licensing, rather than litigation, becomes the primary mechanism for managing these relationships. Whether this deal becomes the norm or an outlier, and whether licensing agreements can adequately address the concerns of individual creators who worry about being displaced by AI remains to be seen.
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