- Disney is partnering with OpenAI to let fans generate videos and images using beloved characters
- OpenAI tools will appear across Disney platforms
- The deal raises questions around freedom and artistic opportunity that are currently unaddressed
The Mouse has entered the prompt box, not to mention all his friends. The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI have signed a deal that will see hundreds of Disney’s beloved characters, props, vehicles, and environments licensed for OpenAI. That means you’ll be allowed to produce images with those characters in ChatGPT and short films starring them made with OpenAI’s Sora AI video platform. Picture Yoda driving the Pizza Planet truck through Arendelle with Deadpool riding shotgun, only without a cease and desist note from Disney’s lawyers.
But beyond the magic and the marketing sheen lies a more complicated and darker story, like one of the live-action prequels or remakes of a beloved animated classic that Disney is so fond of producing. A $1 billion investment by Disney into OpenAI will make it a major enterprise customer, while opening its intellectual property vault to OpenAI’s models trained to remix everything. Every fan, parent of a fan, or artist might want to keep a wary eye on the perhaps less publicized announcements related to the deal.
Let’s start with what’s actually being offered. The deal makes over 200 animated and masked characters from the vast Disney multiverse fair game for Sora and ChatGPT’s image tools. However, the agreement explicitly excludes the likenesses or voices of real actors. The licensing agreement to include every single person associated with a Disney, Pixar, or Marvel character would tax even the largest team of entertainment lawyers, which Disney probably retains anyway.
Disney and OpenAI call this a step toward “human-centered AI” and “responsible storytelling” in their announcement. But it feels more like an even more extreme version of the monetization of nostalgia common to our late-stage capitalist world.
Remix imagination
I used to set up all my action figures from different movies and TV shows and arrange elaborate crossovers, but I didn’t charge people to see them or claim they were brand new narratives. Funneling the most recognizable characters in pop culture through a machine optimized for engagement is bad enough when that machine is human focus groups. Doing it with actual machines seems worse.
Of course, at first, I can see the appeal of getting Disney, Marvel, and Pixar characters to team up. That’s literally the central premise of movies like Deadpool & Wolverine, and especially Wreck-It Ralph and its sequel. Synthetically generating these snippets in images and videos doesn’t even come close to that level of narrative craftsmanship, though. It turns characters and stories into flat “remember this” images, no more meaningful than paper dolls and less so than the stories I would make up about why Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers needed to fight the Joker.
There’s also the matter of how this changes who controls the tools of creation. You might think it’s you, since you’re writing the prompts. Disney and its lawyers might disagree. You’re playing in their sandbox, and they’ll make sure your imagination doesn’t depict anything outside the lines of the licenses.
Which brings up the censorship question. OpenAI already filters outputs for “trust and safety,” and Disney is famously protective of its brand. That they want to prevent “harmful content” is great, but the definition might be a lot narrower than yours, or even your kids. Suppressing satire, critiques of Disney or OpenAI, or anything the most milquetoast of consumers might object to hardly screams “creative renaissance.”
Disney AI apocalypse
Then there’s the labor issue, as independent animators and visual effects artists are voicing concerns about being squeezed out of the industry. If AI can generate a stylized Pixar-style scene with Luke Skywalker in 15 seconds, executives aren’t likely to write checks to the storyboard artists, background painters, and junior animators who used to spend years mastering that craft, even if their final result is far superior to the AI creation (as it almost certainly would be).
Disney’s recent track record on this front isn’t reassuring. The company has been steadily trimming its workforce, particularly in content development, and outsourcing more animation work to third parties.
Meanwhile, Disney is also planning to use ChatGPT for everything from marketing to scripting, with prompts shaping even its customer service. That makes Disney’s $1 billion equity stake in OpenAI about influence as much as access. As OpenAI courts regulators and defines new standards, Disney will have a seat at that table. That may lead to decisions that prioritize legacy brands’ control over fair use or artist rights.
For creatives, this is especially fraught. While Disney and OpenAI say they will “respect the rights of creators,” they offer no clear mechanism for how artists whose work trained these models will be compensated, credited, or even acknowledged.
Generative AI promises magic, but, to mix IP metaphors in a way unlikely to be approved of by Disney, you’re being asked to ignore the man behind the curtain. The dream sold by Disney and OpenAI has barbs in it that may make it more of a saccharine nightmare. Just be cautious that the Mouse with its hand out isn’t a rat ready to control your creativity from under your hat.
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ESchwartzwrites@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
