Disney $DIS ( ▼ 0.27% ) is making its biggest AI move yet. The company agreed to invest 1 billion dollars into OpenAI and will license more than 200 characters from Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars to Sora and ChatGPT under a new three-year deal. It is the first major content licensing partnership for Sora and gives users the ability to generate videos that include some of Disney’s most iconic characters.
Disney will also become a major OpenAI customer. It plans to use OpenAI’s APIs to build new tools for Disney Plus and internal employee workflows, marking one of the company’s largest AI integrations to date. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the partnership shows how creative industries and AI developers can collaborate while still protecting artistic work.
The move is a sharp turn from Disney’s posture earlier this year. The company sued Midjourney and Chinese AI firm MiniMax and sent a cease and desist letter to CharacterAI after alleging unauthorized use of copyrighted content. In what appears to be another escalation, Disney sent a cease and desist letter to Google $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.72% ) accusing it of training AI models on Disney content without permission.
It is still unclear what ownership stake Disney will receive in OpenAI from the investment.