Disney Hits Google With Cease & Desist Claiming AI Copyright On A Massive Scale

This past week Disney inked a $1 billion deal with OpenAI to become a content licensing partner for the Sora AI video generation platform, then immediately went on the legal offensive against Google. As with prior cease and desists sent to Meta, Character.AI, NBC, Warner Bros., and others, Disney's cease and desist relates to AI tools being able to recreate Disney-owned characters. On December 11th, Disney insisted that Google "immediately cease further copying, publicly displaying, publicly performing, distributing, and creating derivative works of Disney's copyrighted characters" and "immediately implement effective technological measures within Google's AI services [...] to ensure that no future outputs infringe Disney works".

The next day, Variety detailed Google's response. This included removing the AI videos (some generated with Google Veo 3) flagged by Disney in its original cease and desist letter, stating that "we have a longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship with ...