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 content resembling characters from Frozen, Deadpool, Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, and others, as reported earlier by Variety and Deadline. In a cease-and-desist letter seen by The Verge, Disney demands that Google stop allegedly infringing on its copyrighted works.

Disney sent the notice on Wednesday, just one day before announcing a billion-dollar deal with OpenAI that 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.

In its letter, Disney calls out Google’s Gemini, Veo, Imagen, and Nano Banana AI models. It says Google is serving as a “virtual vending machine” that’s “flooding the market with infringing works,” while “reaping enormous profits” as a result. Disney also alleges Google has “refused” to implement safeguards against copyright infringement despite attempts to engage the company “for months.”

Google pushes back on this claim, as spokesperson Julie McAlister says the company has a “longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship with Disney” and will “continue to engage” with the entertainment giant. “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,” McAlister adds.

In September, Disney similarly warned Character.AI over potential copyright infringement, leading the AI platform to pull Disney characters from its site. Disney is also suing the AI text-to-image generator Midjourney for allegedly copying some of its biggest characters.

“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. “Disney will not tolerate the unauthorized commercial exploitation of its copyrighted characters and works by so-called AI services.”

Update, December 11th: Added a statement from Google and information from cease and desist.