The deal will license some 200 Disney-owned characters from the likes of Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars for use in Sora, free of charge (as in money) and charges (as in lawsuits).
The deal will also see Disney adopt ChatGPT and Sora internally, which is the other way of the license — helping Disney do everything from light sketches to development planning.
Lopsided payment structure
In a big win for OpenAI, Disney is actually paying them — and not the other way around — with a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI.
At the same time, Disney has sent a cease-and-desist-letter to Google, warning of copyright violations «on a massive scale» and claiming that they are not only violating copyright in model training, but also in outputs that «commercially exploit and distribute copies of its protected works», writes Variety.
These letters might imply that not only will Sora 2 be able to use licensed Disney characters, but that it will be exclusively, with everyone else facing familiar Disney lawsuits.
Read more: OpenAI’s announcement, writeups on Reuters, CNBC, and Ars Technica.