Disney Invests $1 Billion in OpenAI, Cease-and-Desist to Google

Photo Credit: Brian McGowan

Disney issues a cease-and-desist to Google over allegations of widespread copyright infringement as the House of Mouse gets into bed with OpenAI.

Disney has slapped Google with a cease-and-desist letter with allegations of copyright infringement on a “massive scale” using AI to “commercially exploit and distribute” the company’s intellectual property. The move comes as Disney reaches a landmark agreement with OpenAI to the tune of $1 billion.

“Google is infringing Disney’s copyrights on a massive scale by copying a large corpus of Disney’s copyrighted works without authorization to train and develop generative artificial intelligence (AI) models and services, and by using AI models and services to commercially exploit and distribute copies of its protected works in consumers in violation of Disney’s copyrights,” write Disney’s attorneys from law firm Jenner & Block.

“Google operates as a virtual vending machine, capable of reproducing, rendering, and distributing copies of Disney’s valuable library of copyrighted characters and other works on a mass scale,” the letter continues. “And compounding Google’s blatant infringement, many of the infringing images generated by Google’s AI Services are branded with Google’s Gemini logo, falsely implying that Google’s exploitation of Disney’s intellectual property is authorized and endorsed by Disney.”

Among Disney’s allegations, Google’s AI systems and services infringe on IP including Frozen, Moana, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Monsters Inc., Lilo & Stitch, Toy Story, Ratatouille, Brave, Inside Out, Star Wars, “The Simpsons,” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Disney’s cease-and-desist sent to Google follows similar letters the company sent to Meta and Character.AI. Disney also filed litigation alongside NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery against AI companies MidJourney and Minimax, alleging widespread copyright infringement.

“We have a longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship with Disney, and will continue to engage with them,” said a Google spokesperson in a statement. “More generally, we use public data from the open web to build our AI and have built additional innovative copyright controls like Google-extended and Content ID for YouTube, which gives sites and copyright holders control over their content.”

Meanwhile, Disney says it’s been blowing the whistle about Google for months, but claims Google has been unresponsive while the infringement has only increased.

“We’ve been aggressive at protecting our IP, and we’ve gone after other companies that have not honored our IP, not respected our IP, not valued it,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger in an interview with CNBC. “This is just another example of us doing just that.”