The US entertainment group Walt Disney will invest one billion dollars in the AI company OpenAI, thereby further expanding its strategic focus on artificial intelligence. The investment is intended to enable Disney to exert direct influence on the technological development of the ChatGPT developer. At the same time, the group will receive the option to increase its stake in OpenAI in the future. Both companies plan to structure the collaboration for the long term and to develop new digital formats.
At the core of the agreement is a three-year licensing partnership that allows OpenAI to use well-known Disney characters for the AI video tool Sora. These include characters from the worlds of Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars. Using text prompts, users will be able to generate short video clips for social media. A selection of this content is also expected to be made available on the streaming platform Disney+ in the future. However, the license does not include image rights or the voices of real artists.
For Disney, the cooperation opens up new opportunities to transfer existing content into digital applications and to expand its brand universe into AI-based products. CEO Bob Iger stated that the development of generative AI marks a significant turning point for the media industry. By using new technologies, Disney aims to expand its stories while at the same time ensuring the protection of intellectual property.
OpenAI also views the partnership as an important step. CEO Sam Altman described Disney as the global gold standard for storytelling. The collaboration is intended to enable the expansion of Sora’s capabilities and other AI tools, as well as to create new forms of creative use. Industry observers assume that the deal with Disney could pave the way for further partnerships with Hollywood studios.
At the same time as moving closer to OpenAI, Disney is taking a tougher stance toward Google. In a letter from its lawyers, the company accuses the internet giant of using Disney’s copyrighted images and videos on a large scale to train its own AI models and of distributing AI-generated copies of protected content to consumers. Google is one of OpenAI’s main competitors in the field of artificial intelligence.
By planning to use OpenAI’s application programming interfaces (APIs), Disney also intends to develop new products and internal tools. This positions the group not only as an investor, but also as a key customer of the AI provider, underscoring the growing importance of artificial intelligence for the media and entertainment industry.
