The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora

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.

>Now the internet will be flooded by Disney character's videos

How is Disney okay with this anyway? They've sent their lawyers after daycare centers who dared to paint a picture of a Disney character on their walls. Why are they suddenly going to ignore me prompting a video of Winnie the Pooh hitting the bong?

Because they didn't get any money from the daycare and they will get money from OpenAI when you make your Sora video. That's all there is to it.

I have a feeling that the long-term economics of this don't really work. OpenAI is burning money and Altman has already gone out in public saying how Sora-generated content is being made in large volumes for little audience.

>People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.

If OpenAI is going to pay Disney money for Winnie the Pooh smoking crack, I get the feeling that the money is going to come not from Sora profits but from companies that invested in OpenAI. Companies like Disney. Not that Sora is going to generate any profit if I can generate a video for free and I then post it on Discord instead.

Yes, that's what makes Disney investing in OpenAI as part of this so confusing to me. Sign a licensing deal that means OpenAI pays you every time someone uses your character? Absolutely. Who cares if they're burning cash, as long as you get your payday it's all good. But investing in the company means their cash burning is your problem too. I don't know why you'd do it.

The brand rot will be disgusting here. I thought "family" companies like Nintendo and Disney hit so hard, against their best interests, because they didn't want the next pregnant Elsa or Nazi Mario to cause a storm on their carefully tailored brands.

Seems like Nintendo still has that long term thinking. Disney was just waiting for the right price.

The only explanation is if they think they can juice their stock by 2 billion and then whoever is on the ship jumps before the crash.

Sounds like Iger has his finger on the eject button. How much stock has he announced to be cashing out over 2026?

>People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.

That was the issue even the biggest Ai fans pointed out from day one. People aren't gonna post their videos on Sora. They are gonna make it on Sora and post on TikTok. A watermark won't change that reality (and I don't think ClosedAI is worried about brand recognition and taking a hit for that).

Likenthr rest of the scene, it's so utterly tone deaf.

Sora is a heavily censored model so presumably they believe they can stop that sort of content being generated.

As an aside: Winnie the Pooh is public domain, so he can do drugs if he wants. But he shouldn't wear a red shirt while he does.

I mean, Disney can do basically whatever it wants and nothing will change. If my gay, Muslim friends are still willing to patronize the parks, despite their very real disagreement with how Disney conducts its business, then what hope is there for the exhausted, overworked mom whose child won't stop wailing about watching Frozen? This will absolutely tarnish the brand, and yet people will still consume Disney slop.

It’s not that.

It’s ego and desperation for one last hurrah. Disney has a history of being a corporate governance nightmare - which Iger ironically contributed toward fixing. He’s undoing all that now.

> I have a feeling that the long-term economics of this don't really work. OpenAI is burning money and Altman has already gone out in public saying how Sora-generated content is being made in large volumes for little audience.

Let me introduce you to ponze scheme. He is feeding the hype, that's all that matters right now. More and more cash... The only real winner will be Nvidia when the bubble explode.

Dysneys characters are entering the public domain, they can either cash out now or not at all.

Mickey mouse is now copyright free, pluto is in two weeks, then pretty much the whole roster by 2030 https://michelsonip.com/news/disney-characters-in-the-public...

Mickey Mouse's character design as of 1930 is in the public domain. But if you ask an AI image model for "Mickey Mouse", you'll probably get something based on more recent versions of the character which are still copyrighted.

Disney, is well aware of the writing on the wall that copyright is going to continue to become increasingly harder to enforce, as generative ai distances itself from brute mimicry, and because infringers can generate new versions faster that takedown notices can be filed. Their alternative is to either be steamrolled, or leverage their IP while it has worth in order to latch on to the AI market. Plus, they give a solid explanation: it is free advertising when there are guardrails on how the characters can behave/say/portray (which is the advantage of the deal — I assume a similar one with Google, Microsoft or Apple will be forthcoming too).

When a true “leader” big or small emerges, every bit of capital will flock to it, leaving a burned out nest of ai company husks. But hey…maybe this time will be completely different. (And upon consideration, I think this is exactly why. All their deals are with the husks, while keeping their IP to leverage with the winner.)

IMHO the smart people saw the "Ghibli scandal" and thought "omg this is the feature of IP".

You don't like the last Star Wars trilogy? Pay us a few hundred dollars and you can rewrite your own story, thank you very much this is where you put the credit card number.

It was INEVITABLE.

> If my gay, Muslim friends are still willing to patronize the parks, despite their very real disagreement with how Disney conducts its business

What is this referring to?

Mickey Mouse with red shorts and at least yellow gloves is already in the public domain: https://old.reddit.com/r/publicdomain/comments/18w4lnf/since...

The "modern" Mickey Mouse will be at the public domain in about five years.

They say that if you were to parachute Sam onto North Sentinel Island and come back in five years to check on him, he'd be their king.

I’m pretty sure people don’t want that for the same reason people buy books instead of writing things they want to read. It’s not just to save the effort— stories are good because they surprise, challenge, and inspire us. I think the idea of the “everyone can make the exact movies they want to see” thing conceptually makes sense at first blush, but I just don’t think people want something that matches their assumptions entirely.

Not only that, they’re materially worse than real movies. Designer t-shirts still sell despite people being able to buy blank t-shirts and color them in with laundry markers.

Oh that's not red, it's crimson

After having stolen all their eyeballs?

It's not just that: generative AI tools make it so easy to make content that you run into discoverability problems. The pool of available content becomes huge but without a way to market or otherwise differentiate yourself, no one will likely stumble across it.

We already see this dynamic with the "vanity press" pay-to-play record labels / distributors like DistroKid: the vast majority of their catalog has never been played or was only played to test the initial upload. Huge numbers of tracks have a tiny number of views, with many literally never played. "Democratizing" content creation predictably does this, and it's frankly bizarre it wasn't anticipated.

If it's smart it won't be what you planned, but it'll almost always be what you like. If you thought the Vader scene at the end of Rogue One was stupid fanservice, it leans one way; if you went "FINALLY! YES!" it leans another. Lather rinse repeat across many potential inputs.

With the right sensors, your sentiment will be apparent to the system and it will be able to tune on the fly.

I think curated interactive environments like games are a much more realistic application of those distant technologies than automatically modified Hollywood movies on the fly.

And personally, I have absolutely no desire to modify movies that bothered me, story-wise, artistically, or editorially, with my own ideas. Likewise, I also don’t want to modify classic paintings to make the people fit my preferences for attractiveness. And I sure don’t want it done automatically.

Art is interesting because it comes from other people’s brains.

They smell blood in the water and just bought their next gen studios for $1B

Like I said, wait four years and all the main characters most recognised incarnations will be in the public domain.

  > Mickey mouse is now copyright free

Not true.

Scroll down on this page[0] and you'll see the different Mickeys and most of them are not under copyright. You got Steamboat Whillie + gloves but no Fantasia Mickey or later. Definitely no red-pants version.

Unsurprisingly Disney knows what they're doing and they have 95 years to modify a character's looks (and how the public imagines that character) before it enters public domain.

  > pluto is in two weeks

Not the Pluto you're thinking of...[1]

[0] https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/

[1] https://www.disneydining.com/disney-copyright-loss-pluto-202...

I think this is a great take.

Wait - where is that wrinkle from?

The modern books?

They’re not. It will take them so long to negotiate the terms of using important IP that Sora will become obsolete.

Disney has a long history of donating large dollars to ultra-conservative legislators and presidential hopefuls (they also donate to liberal candidates as well). As for the Muslim portion, it’s most likely due to Disney donating $2 million to Israeli Non-profits and condemning terrorism while making no statements or donations to the Palestinian people’s or groups that attempt to provide to the Palestinian people Israel was bombing in the closing months of 2023. The BDS movement has and keeps Disney on their list of boycott targets to this day.

> It’s not just to save the effort— stories are good because they surprise, challenge, and inspire us.

Maybe, but that's the minority of demand. Most book sales are to people looking for something comfortable - think the near-infinite supply of practically interchangeable romance novels or detective stories.

It'll be interesting to see whether OpenAI is able to enforce the guardrails that Disney would want...

Yes, we should abolish it. Great that you drew a shitty drawing, why would that mean I can’t draw a mouse anymore?

It’s archaic. The only thing we need now is identification. Oh, this is actually produced by Disney? Great. Oh, this is some Chinese knockoff? I might not want to consume it then.

Or they could make, you know, new stuff people want to watch?

> infringers can generate new versions faster that takedown notices can be filed

This was the case with youtube, and it was touch and go if they were going to be forced to close in the early days.

In the land of the blind, the man with a I is king!