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- Lawsuits or billion-dollar deals: How Disney picks its AI copyright battles (businessinsider.com)
Disney Draws Line in the Sand, or Rather, the IP Realm, Against AI Imitators
Orlando, FL – The House of Mouse, renowned for its fierce protection of beloved characters, is once again flexing its intellectual property muscles. This time, the target is ByteDance, the Chinese tech giant behind TikTok and its new AI video generation model, Seedance 2.0. Disney has issued a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging that the platform is “hijacking” its iconic characters without permission.
The controversy erupted after Seedance 2.0 users began creating and sharing AI-generated videos featuring Disney and Marvel characters, including a viral clip depicting a never-before-seen fight between Wolverine and Thanos. This move by ByteDance aligns with a growing trend in the AI industry, often described as an “ask for forgiveness, not permission” strategy when it comes to utilizing existing intellectual property.
Disney’s letter to ByteDance explicitly states that the company is “reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters” without authorization. This marks a clear escalation in Disney’s efforts to safeguard its extensive catalog of characters and stories in the burgeoning world of artificial intelligence.
However, Disney’s approach to AI companies isn’t entirely uniform. While ByteDance faces legal action, the entertainment conglomerate took a significantly different path with OpenAI, the leading AI startup responsible for the text-to-video platform, Sora. When Sora users also began generating Disney character content, instead of a cease-and-desist, Disney opted for negotiation.
By December, Disney and OpenAI had announced a three-year licensing agreement. This deal not only allows Sora users, with certain restrictions, to access 200 Disney characters but also includes a reported $1 billion investment by Disney into OpenAI. This strategic alliance suggests that while Disney is vigilant about unauthorized use of its IP, it is also open to collaborating with AI companies under mutually beneficial terms.
Disney CEO Bob Iger has indicated that the company views AI not as a threat, but as a potential avenue to enhance audience engagement. During a recent earnings call, Iger suggested that AI could “provide users of Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user-generated content, and to consume user-generated content, mostly short form, from others.”
This dual strategy highlights Disney’s complex navigation of the AI landscape: aggressively defending its intellectual property from perceived infringement while simultaneously exploring opportunities to integrate AI into its future content and audience experiences.
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- Lawsuits or billion-dollar deals: How Disney picks its AI copyright battles (businessinsider.com)