Google has bowed to a cease and desist order from Disney, according to the showbiz trade publications Deadline and Variety, and taken down some unknown number of AI videos featuring Disney intellectual property. Both publications estimate “dozens,” suggesting a fairly targeted effort.
A deal between Disney and OpenAI—Google’s fiercest AI rival—was announced Thursday that sees Disney investing $1 billion in OpenAI while sanctioning the use of its characters in outputs by the Sora family of video models. Disney’s cease and desist letter to Google was delivered on Wednesday, before the announcement of its OpenAI deal, according to Deadline.
Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC the cease and desist letter came after past conversations with Google about this material had been fruitless.
At least some of the the material mentioned in the Disney cease and desist order was generated with Google’s Veo, according to the trades. Google was apparently hosting IP from the Star Wars and Simpsons franchises, along with material featuring the auxiliary Marvel Cinematic Universe character Deadpool. Mickey Mouse was also on the list of Disney properties subject to the cease and desist, per Variety.
According to admittedly anecdotal evidence 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—ran rampant. Seeking the removal of Marvel material, if it was anything like this video (that I’m not going to embed here for reasons that should be obvious) would be a pretty clear-cut 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 actually does not belong to Disney. He belongs to you and me. But certain aspects of his use are trademarked by Disney (which can be thought of more as a way of preventing consumer confusion than as some lingering copyright claw-back). Also, only Mickey Mouse material from, by my count, the first 15 Mickey Mouse films is in the public domain so far.
So material that got mixed up with Disney’s Mickey Mouse trademarks, or built upon work still covered by Disney’s copyrights, could still have been vulnerable. This video, also posted on Reddit about six months ago, of the Mickey Mouse costumed character at what looks like a Disney park getting into some sort of reality TV-inspired conflict with a human woman could plausibly fall into either of these categories.
According to OpenAI, its licensing deal with Disney will last three years, and will involve user-generated AI videos based on “more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters,” and some of this material will be used as programming on Disney+. I can’t readily picture something a Sora user could come up with that would be worth watching on a streaming service that will also let me watch peak human achievements like 1940’s Pinocchio and 1961’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians, but I’ll try to keep an open mind.
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