Disney accuses Google AI of massive copyright infringement, demands immediate action

Disney says Google AI infringes copyright "on a massive scale"

The Wild West of copyrighted characters in AI may be coming to an end. There has been legal wrangling over the role of copyright in the AI era, but the mother of all legal teams may now be gearing up for a fight. Disney has sent a cease and desist to Google, alleging the company's AI tools are infringing Disney's copyrights "on a massive scale." According to the letter, Google is violating the entertainment conglomerate's intellectual property in multiple ways. The legal notice says Google has copied a "large corpus" of Disney's works to train its gen AI models, which is believable, as Google's image and video models will happily produce popular Disney characters -- they couldn't do that without feeding the models lots of Disney data. The C&D also takes issue with Google for distributing "copies of its protected works" to consumers. So all those memes you've been making with Disney characters? Yeah, Disney doesn't like that, either. The letter calls out a huge number of Disney-owned properties that can be prompted into existence in Google AI, including The Lion King, Deadpool, and Star Wars. The company calls on Google to immediately stop using Disney content in its AI tools and create measures to ensure that future AI outputs don't produce any characters that Disney owns. Disney is famously litigious and has an army of lawyers dedicated to defending its copyrights. The nature of copyright law in the US is a direct result of Disney's legal maneuvering, which has extended its control of iconic characters by decades. While Disney wants its characters out of Google AI generally, the letter specifically cited the AI tools in YouTube. Google has started adding its Veo AI video model to YouTube, allowing creators to more easily create and publish videos. That seems to be a greater concern for Disney than image models like Nano Banana. Google has yet to make any statement about Disney's legal warning -- a warning Google must have known was coming. A Google spokesperson has issued the following statement on the mater. "We have a longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship with Disney, and will continue to engage with them," Google says. "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 give sites and copyright holders control over their content."

Disney hits Google with cease-and-desist claiming 'massive' copyright infringement | TechCrunch

Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google on Wednesday, alleging that the tech giant has infringed on its copyrights, Variety reports. Disney is accusing the tech giant of copyright infringement on a "massive scale," claiming it has used AI models and services to commercially distribute unauthorized images and videos, according to the letter seen by Variety. "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 reads. "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." The letter alleges that Google's AI systems infringe characters from "Frozen," "The Lion King," "Moana," "The Little Mermaid," "Deadpool," and more." Google did not respond to TechCrunch's request for comment. The move comes the same day that Disney signed a $1 billion, three-year deal with OpenAI that will bring its iconic characters to the company's Sora AI video generator.

Disney Slaps Google With Cease and Desist, Claiming 'Massive' Copyright Violations

While Disney inks a $1 billion deal with OpenAI to license its characters for AI videos, the entertainment giant is also reportedly going after Google, Variety reported Thursday. In a cease-and-desist letter sent on Wednesday, Disney claims Google's AI models are infringing upon its copyright protections on a "massive scale." Google's latest AI model, nicknamed nano banana pro, gives its users the ability to create ultra-realistic AI images. This ability has worried copyright and intellectual property owners, which is why many have sued AI companies. Disney, along with Universal and Warner Bros., has already filed lawsuits against Midjourney AI over similar infringement concerns. CNET has reached out to Disney and Google for comment. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Disney accuses Google of 'massive' copyright infringement following deal with OpenAI

Disney has accused Google of engaging in copyright infringement on a "massive scale," claiming its AI models have generated images resembling characters from Frozen, Deadpool, Star Wars, and others, according to a report from Variety. In a cease-and-desist letter sent to Google on Wednesday, Disney demands that the tech giant stop allegedly infringing on its copyrighted works. Disney sent the notice just one day before announcing a billion-dollar deal with OpenAI, which will allow Sora AI users to create videos using more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars. The AI-generated videos will also appear on Disney Plus, too, which CEO Bob Iger teased last month. "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," Disney's letter says, according to Variety. "Disney will not tolerate the unauthorized commercial exploitation of its copyrighted characters and works by so-called AI services." Disney has also sent cease-and-desist letters to Meta and Character.AI in the past.

Disney has accused Google of copyright infringement on a 'massive scale'

Disney has accused Google of copyright infringement on a "massive scale," alleging that the tech giant is training its AI tools on protected materials as well as allowing those tools to generate infringing images and videos. reports that Disney attorneys sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google on Wednesday. "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 to consumers in violation of Disney's copyrights," reads the letter, which Variety reviewed. The letter includes examples of images from several Disney properties including Deadpool, Moana, Star Wars and others, reproduced by Google's AI tools. Disney is demanding that Google implement guardrails within all its AI products to prevent further infringement. The media giant sent a to Character.AI in September, and is currently suing and over alleged copyright infringement. Copyright enforcement has become more challenging in the face of AI-created imagery, and companies are increasingly taking an "if you can't beat them, join them" approach. Today Disney with OpenAI to license its characters for use in Sora, OpenAI's video generator. The deal will see Disney invest $1 billion in OpenAI (a paltry sum by ), with the option to purchase additional equity at a later date.

Disney tells Google to stop using its characters in AI images and videos

Earlier today, OpenAI announced a major deal with Disney that will allow ChatGPT and Sora to create officially licensed, AI-generated imagery featuring the media giant's popular characters. Now, Disney wants to stop another leading AI provider from doing the same. Disney has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google, accusing the company of copyright infringement in Gemini output. Variety reports that in a letter reviewed by the publication, Disney's lawyers accuse Google of infringing on Disney's copyrights "on a massive scale," citing Gemini's ability to create imagery that includes copyrighted characters from across Disney's expansive catalog of intellectual properties. Disney has apparently been informally communicating with Google about this for some time, but as of today, Gemini still readily produces imagery featuring Disney's characters.

Disney sent Google a cease-and-desist over AI just as it signed a deal with OpenAI

Disney announced a billion dollar agreement with OpenAI this morning over use of its characters, and Google's going to have to pray it doesn't alter the deal any further. Alongside the decision to offer up its most iconic imagery and characters for use with Sora -- OpenAI's cross between an AI video generation tool and a social network -- Disney is going after Google's own use of its IP in its own genAI tools. As reported by Ars Technica, Disney issued a cease-and-desist letter to Google on Wednesday evening, hours before the Sora agreement was made official, accusing the company of copyright infringement and requesting an immediate end to using these characters for both training data and within apps like YouTube. Disney's letter calls out specific franchises, including Frozen, The Lion King, Moana, The Little Mermaid, Lilo and Stitch, Toy Story, Star Wars, and the MCU, as the IP Google's AI tools are currently capable of generating. The company's lawyers are requesting Google "immediately cease further copying, publicly displaying, publicly performing, distributing, and creating derivative works of Disney's copyrighted characters," specifically but not necessarily limited to YouTube and its various off-shoots, like Shorts. As reported by Variety, which published portions of the letter, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed his company had held "conversations" with Google for months prior to beginning legal action, but felt Google hadn't made any in-roads into making changes over its own internal policies. Despite Nano Banana not being specified in today's cease-and-desist, Disney did include AI-generated figurine images in its claim, arguing Sundar Pichai taking part in an associated viral trend encouraged further drove copyright infringement by users. Google shared the following statement with Ars Technica: We have a longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship with Disney, and will continue to engage with them. 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 give sites and copyright holders control over their content. Today's news is just the latest chapter in the ongoing cold war between Google and Disney, just about a month after settling their dispute over YouTube TV carriage fees.

After OpenAI deal, Disney demands Google cease-and-desist

Disney has sent a legal threat to Google, telling the company to stop using its characters in its AI models. Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Today, Disney and OpenAI announced a surprising partnership, which will allow ChatGPT users to generate content with Disney's iconic characters. On the heels of that news, Variety reported that Disney sent Google a cease-and-desist notice on Wednesday evening, threatening legal action over the search giant's alleged use of Disney's intellection property in its AI models. Disney is accusing Google of copyright infringement on a "massive scale," claiming Google's AI models "commercially exploit and distribute" infringing media. Disney has reportedly accused Google of infringing on Disney properties such as Star Wars, Frozen, The Lion King, Moana, The Little Mermaid, Deadpool, and The Guardians of the Galaxy. Disney has also accused Google of encouraging users to take part in Generative AI trends such as prompts that create images of "action figures" depicting Disney-owned characters. According to Variety, images of figurines depicting Darth Vader, Deadpool, Homer Simpson, and Elsa from Frozen were included in examples in the cease-and-desist letter. Disney's recent actions are certainly interesting. Just this past June, Disney filed a lawsuit against AI image generation company Midjourney over the use of Disney's IP in AI-generated content. At the time, Disney lawyers called Midjourney "a bottomless pit of plagiarism." So, why has Disney partnered with one, and only one, AI company? By granting OpenAI an exclusive license to use its characters, OpenAI will now be able to argue that Google and other AI companies are violating that license. When OpenAI launched its AI video platform Sora in October, the company was immediately criticized for allowing users to generate video content utilizing other brands' copyrighted characters. OpenAI eventually announced that any company could opt out of Sora inclusion on a character-by-character basis. And in Mashable's testing of AI image and video generators, we found that most of these AI tools will readily produce deepfakes featuring Star Wars and Marvel characters. Now, Disney has demanded that Google "immediately cease further copying, publicly displaying, publicly performing, distributing, and creating derivative works of Disney's copyrighted characters" in "outputs of Google's AI Services, including through YouTube's mobile app, YouTube Shorts and YouTube." In addition, Disney wants Google to put safeguards in place "to ensure that no future outputs infringe Disney works." In effect, Disney is putting the AI world on notice.

Disney sends cease-and-desist to Google, alleging copyright infringement

Why it matters: The letter puts copyright pressure on Google, which to date has been less aggressive about striking partnerships with copyright owners than some peers like OpenAI. Zoom in: The letter, sent from David Singer, an attorney representing Disney, alleges Google's "willful infringement is especially alarming because it is leveraging its dominance in generative AI and across multiple other markets to make its infringing AI Services as widely available as possible." * It alleges Google has already integrated its AI services into many of its existing products and services, including its Workspace applications and YouTube. * "Google's AI Services are designed to free ride off Disney's intellectual property," the letter reads. "Google has refused to implement any technological measures to mitigate or prevent copyright infringement, even though such measures are readily available and being used by Google's competitors. Instead, Google continues to directly exploit Disney's copyrights for commercial gain." Zoom out: Disney's lawyer claims the company has been raising its concerns with Google for months, "but Google has done nothing in response." * "If anything, Google's infringement has only increased during that time," he writes. The big picture: Disney has taken a leadership position in Hollywood when it comes to pressuring AI firms over the fair use of content. Its efforts so far have yielded some positive results. * Disney struck a comprehensive deal with OpenAI on Thursday. OpenAI originally said IP owners would have to opt-out of having their copyrighted characters included in its Sora service, but quickly changed its position to an opt-in policy after Hollywood backlash. * In September, the company sent a cease and desist letter to Character.AI with similar copyright allegations. The letter forced Character.AI to make changes to the way it used Disney's intellectual property. * In June, the entertainment giant -- alongside NBCUniversal -- became the first major studio to sue a generative AI company when it filed a complaint against Midjourney. Warner Bros. Discovery sued Midjourney in early September. * Earlier this month, Disney teamed with NBCU and WBD to sue the Chinese AI firm MiniMax, alleging large-scale piracy of their respective studios' copyrighted works. For the record: Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the Disney letter.

Disney Targets Google Over AI Copyright Violations -- Alongside $1 Billion OpenAI Deal - Decrypt

Disney demanded that Google halt all AI outputs featuring its characters and add safeguards. The fight over AI copyright infringement took an unexpected turn on Thursday as Disney hit Google with a cease and desist order, accusing the tech giant of "infringing Disney's copyrights on a massive scale." The move landed the same week that Disney reached a deal with OpenAI -- announced Thursday morning -- that will let the company license hundreds of its characters for use in Sora, the ChatGPT maker's video generation model. According to a report in Variety, attorneys for Disney sent the cease-and-desist letter to Google on Wednesday, accusing Google of copying a large library of Disney works to train its AI systems. Disney asserted that Google then distributed outputs that incorporated Disney characters through Google's Veo, Imagen, and Nano Banana. "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 to consumers in violation of Disney's copyrights," the letter reportedly said. In the letter, Disney said Google's AI models generated images featuring characters from Frozen, The Lion King, Moana, The Little Mermaid, Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Star Wars. It included examples, such as a depiction of Darth Vader produced through text prompts in Google's AI apps. Disney demanded that Google stop what it called unauthorized copying, public display, distribution, and creation of derivative works of its characters. The company also told Google to put in place measures across its AI systems to prevent future infringement. Representatives for Google and Disney did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Decrypt. The confrontation comes as OpenAI announced a formal agreement with Disney to allow fan-made AI images of its characters. Under that deal, Sora will be able to generate short user-prompted videos featuring more than 200 characters across Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm. Under the agreement, fan-made AI shorts will be streamed on Disney+. The deal also included a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI. "This agreement shows how AI companies and creative leaders can work together responsibly to promote innovation that benefits society, respect the importance of creativity, and help works reach vast new audiences," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. The cease and desist letter comes at a time when companies and creators are pushing back against generative AI developers in court. In October, a federal judge ruled that authors can pursue claims against OpenAI for unlawfully downloading their books and using them to train models. This was followed in December by a ruling that said OpenAI had to turn over roughly 20 million de-identified ChatGPT logs to The New York Times.

Disney Takes Sides in a Big Way Amid AI War Between OpenAI and Google

The entertainment studio is clearly picking sides in the heated rivalry. Complaints Against Google "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 to consumers in violation of Disney's copyrights," said the letter from, Jenner & Block, the law firm representing Disney, to Google's general counsel, according to Variety. The letter argues that "Google's AI Services are designed to free ride off Disney's intellectual property," adding that Google has "refused" to take measures to avoid infringement, even though methods are "readily available and being used by Google's competitors."

Disney Hits Google With AI Copyright Infringement Cease-and-Desist Letter

Broadway Box Office: 'Harry Potter' Is Back On Top As Industry Grosses Tumble Disney has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google accusing the tech giant of using Disney's copyrighted works to train its AI models. In the letter, sent Wednesday, Disney says there has been copyright infringement on a "massive scale," given its claims that Google has been using AI models and services to "commercially exploit and distribute copies" across many channels, including Google Workspace applications and the YouTube mobile application. "Google has deeply embedded its infringing video and image AI Services into its broad family of products and services actively used by over a billion people. This multiplies the scope of Google's infringement, and harm to Disney's intellectual property, not to mention the ill-gotten benefits Google enjoys from its unauthorized exploitation of Disney's copyrighted works," the letter reads. The letter comes just as Disney announced it had reached a partnership with OpenAI and agreed to invest $1 billion into the Google rival. Disney has sent similar letters to Meta and Character.AI, and is in litigation with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery against Midjourney and Minimax. Disney claims in the letter that it has been raising its concerns with Google for months, but that Google has not taken action. "If anything, Google's infringement has only increased during that time," the letter states. "Google's AI Services are designed to free ride off Disney's intellectual property. Google has refused to implement any technological measures to mitigate or prevent copyright infringement, even though such measures are readily available and being used by Google's competitors. Instead, Google continues to directly exploit Disney's copyrights for commercial gain," the letter reads.