OpenAI will receive more cash to burn, as Disney makes a $1bn deal that will see the Mouse House’s characters appear in Sora. In November, Disney boss Bob Iger announced on an earnings call that big changes are coming to its streaming service. And because it’s 2025, and we can’t move without seeing an AI ... Disney buys into the AI grift with $1bn OpenAI investment
OpenAI will receive more cash to burn, as Disney makes a $1bn deal that will see the Mouse House’s characters appear in Sora.
In November, Disney boss Bob Iger announced on an earnings call that big changes are coming to its streaming service. And because it’s 2025, and we can’t move without seeing an AI button plastered on everything, it was easy to guess what at least one of those changes was.
Subscribers will, Iger said at the time, be able to produce their own “gen-AI short-form user-generated content” in Disney+, which immediately made us think gloomily about Sora – OpenAI’s mix of gen-AI slop factory and TikTok-style slop sharing platform.
Roughly a month later, along comes confirmation of a deal we suspected all along. Disney has made a three-year licencing agreement that will see 200 characters under the Mouse House’s ownership – think Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, plus princesses and talking animals – officially appearing in Sora. Thanks to that agreement, made official via OpenAI’s announcement, “fan-inspired Sora short form videos [will] be able to stream on Disney+.”
The deal will also see Disney give OpenAI an absolute shedload of money – a $1bn ‘equity investment’, plus an option to throw in more if Iger and his board fancies it. Disney will also start foisting OpenAI products on its workers, including its fancy take on auto-complete, ChatGPT.
Disney is therefore the latest in a string of companies to fling untold sums at OpenAI – a company burning through cash faster than it can make it. Some economists have already warned of an over-exuberance in the AI sector, as OpenAI and Nvidia are valued in the trillions even as they ‘invest’ money in each other to further fluff up their stock prices. It’s led to growing concerns that we’re in the midst of an economic bubble that could burst at any moment, taking much of the global economy down with it.
But back to those AI Disney clips.
When Sora 2 launched earlier this year, the new platform rapidly filled up with grim, copyright-infringing videos of, say, Pikachu roasting on a barbecue and the title characters from Rick And Morty advertising cryptocurrencies. In its statement, OpenAI writes that “Under the agreement, Disney and OpenAI are affirming a shared commitment to the responsible use of AI that protects user safety and the rights of creators.”
Here’s hoping OpenAI try a bit harder with those protections than it did earlier this year, otherwise we’re going to see videos of Darth Vader doing something absolutely unspeakable to Mickey Mouse in a few months or so.
More news on our impending slop apocalypse as it comes in.
