Disney divides and conquers

Disney wants to be both the life of the AI party and the bouncer at the door.

Today, the company unveiled a three-year collaboration with OpenAI that will let Sora and ChatGPT Image users incorporate more than 200 Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars characters into their AI-generated photos and videos starting next year. Disney will also integrate OpenAI’s tech across its organization, using OpenAI’s APIs to build new Disney+ features, upgrade tools, and roll out ChatGPT to employees.

Disney sweetened the deal with a $1 billion investment in OpenAI, and executives signaled that more capital could follow. The House of Mouse gained 2.42% on the news.

Not every guest gets a wristband

Disney’s AI strategy isn’t all handshakes and hugs; on the other side of the room, it’s yanking Google out of the party.

The company fired off a cease-and-desist letter late Wednesday accusing Google of using Disney’s copyrighted content to train its AI models and circulating that material without approval.

"Google has refused to implement any technological measures to mitigate or prevent copyright infringement, even though such measures are readily available and being used by Google's competitors. Instead, Google continues to directly exploit Disney's copyrights for commercial gain," the letter noted.

This isn’t Disney’s first AI clash: In June, it joined NBCUniversal in filing the first major Hollywood lawsuit against a generative-AI developer, accusing Midjourney of using and distributing AI-generated versions of the studios’ characters. In September, it issued a similar warning to Character.AI.

The next chapter

As AI becomes a central force across industries, entertainment companies face a choice: resist it, or embrace it.

Disney’s team-up with OpenAI suggests studios may be rethinking their entire approach to AI. Instead of fighting every unauthorized use of their characters, they can license their worlds to the companies building the tech and turn a looming threat into a revenue stream. The risk, however, is that embracing AI could ultimately accelerate the very shift that threatens traditional content creation.

For OpenAI, partnering with Disney gives Sora instant credibility and mainstream reach. Sam Altman must be particularly pleased with Disney’s decision to side with OpenAI at the same time that it lashed out at Google—a company which has significantly closed the AI gap lately, forcing the OpenAI CEO to declare a “code red” to combat the tech titan.

Altman struck while the iron was hot today and unveiled OpenAI’s newest LLM model: ChatGPT 5.2. Designed to “unlock even more economic value for people,” OpenAI likely hopes this latest edition steals the spotlight from Google’s Gemini 3.

If all goes well, OpenAI becomes a helpful Hollywood sidekick. If not…well, every Disney movie has a villain.—SY