Tag: Bob Iger

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Disney accuses Google of using AI to engage in copyright infringement on ‘massive scale’

As Disney has gone into business with OpenAI, the Mouse House is accusing Google of copyright infringement on a “massive scale” using AI models and services to “commercially exploit and distribute” infringing images and videos.

On Wednesday evening, attorneys for Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google, demanding that Google stop the alleged infringement in its AI systems.

“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 to Google’s general counsel from law firm Jenner & Block on behalf of Disney.

The letter continued, “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. 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.”

According to the letter, which Variety has reviewed, Disney alleges that Google’s AI systems and services infringe Disney characters including those from “Frozen,” “The Lion King,” “Moana,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Deadpool,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Toy Story,” “Brave,” “Ratatouille,” “Monsters Inc.,” “Lilo & Stich,” “Inside Out” and franchises such as Star Wars, the Simpsons, and Marvel’s Avengers and Spider-Man. In its letter, Disney included examples of images it claims were generated by text prompts in Google’s AI apps, including of Darth Vader

The allegations against Google follows cease-and-desist letters that Disney sent earlier to Meta and Character.AI, as well as litigation Disney filed together with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery against AI companies Midjourney and Minimax alleging copyright infringement.

Asked for comment, a Google spokesperson said, “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.”

According to Disney, the company has been raising its concerns with Google for months — but says Google hasn’t done anything in response, and that i anything, Google’s infringement has only increased during that time.

Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, in an interview with CNBC Thursday, said, “Well, 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. And this is another example of us doing just that.”

Iger said Disney had been in discussions with Google “basically expressing our concerns” about its AI systems’ alleged infringement. “And ultimately, because we didn’t really make any progress, the conversations didn’t bear fruit, we felt we had no choice but to send them a cease-and-desist [letter].”

Disney’s letter to Google demands 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.” (Variety)

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Disney+ has ‘huge opportunity’ in games and will tap into AI-based user generated content, CEO Iger says

Ready to play a game starring Stitch on Disney+? Or maybe create some kind of personalized, AI-animated version of the chaotic but oh-so-adorable alien from “Lilo & Stitch” you can share with your friends?

Disney+, which is in the process of merging with Hulu into a unified platform, is preparing “the biggest and the most significant changes from a product perspective” since the streaming service launched in late 2019, according to CEO Bob Iger, speaking on the media giant’s September quarter earnings call Thursday.

Iger then sketched out Disney+’s future roadmap — which could include games, commerce and AI user generated content. The big vision, he said, “particularly with the deployment of AI,” is to be able to leverage Disney+ “as a portal to all things Disney.”

“There’s an opportunity to use it as an engagement engine for people who want to go to our theme parks, want to stay at our hotels, want to enjoy our cruises, our cruise ships,” said Iger. “And obviously, there’s a huge opportunity for games.” He cited Disney’s $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games, the company behind “Fortnite,” and while the games and experiences developed under the partnership “will largely be on their platform,” the Epic pact “gives us an opportunity to integrate a number of game-like features into Disney+.”

Iger, on a roll, continued, “The other thing that we’re really excited about that AI is going to give us the ability to do is to provide users at Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user generated content and to consume user generated content, mostly short form from others.”

“There are great opportunities in terms of our collection of data and our mining of data,” Iger told analysts. “And I’d say above all else, there’s phenomenal opportunities to deploy AI across our direct-to-consumer platforms, both to provide tools that make the platforms more dynamic and more sticky with consumers, but also give consumers the opportunity to create on our platforms.”

Needless to say, any AI features the Mouse House lights up on Disney+ would likely be confined within a very strict sandbox. Iger said Disney execs have had “some interesting conversations with some of the AI companies, and I would characterize some of them as quite productive conversations as well, seeking to not only protect the value of our IP and of our creative engines, but also to seek opportunities for us to use their technology to create more engagement with consumers. And we feel encouraged by some of the discussions that we’re having.”

Iger didn’t identify which AI companies Disney has spoken to. But, he said, “It’s obviously imperative for us to protect our IP using with this new technology, and we’ve been pretty engaged on that subject with a number of entities, and I’m hopeful that ultimately we’ll be able to reach some agreement with the industry or companies” that would “reflect our need to protect the IP.”

On that front, this year Disney began actively engaged in legal action against AI companies that it alleges had infringed its copyrights. Disney, together with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery, has sued Midjourney and Chinese AI company MiniMax, seeking to recover monetary damages and injunctions to block the alleged infringement.

Beyond using AI for content production and for features in products like Disney+, the company sees opportunities in terms of increasing efficiency by deploying AI across the enterprise “as we engage with our cast members and our our employees, but also our guests and our customers.” (Variety)