Generative AI: Disney accuses Google of massive copyright infringement
Google's generative AI is said to be infringing Disney's rights on a large scale. The outputs are then also distributed on YouTube. Disney is angry.
(Image: AFM Visuals/Shutterstock.com)
The Disney conglomerate is betting on OpenAI and licensing more than 200 characters for three years for use with the AI video generator Sora. Other generative artificial intelligences, however, are to keep their hands off copyright-protected Disney characters. According to Disney CEO Bob Iger, talks with Google in this regard have yielded nothing. Therefore, he has now sent Google a stern cease and desist letter.
"We were in discussions with Google; we expressed our concerns," Iger reported in a television interview. "Ultimately, because we weren't making progress and our discussions weren't showing success, we felt we had no choice but to send a cease and desist letter." This is not the first such case: "We have pursued other companies that have not respected our rights," said the Disney CEO to CNBC. In fact, his conglomerate has already sent similar cease and desist letters to Meta Platforms and Character.AI. Furthermore, Disney, together with other rights holders, has filed a lawsuit against AI companies Midjourney and Minimax.
"Google is infringing Disney's copyright on a massive scale by copying a large corpus of Disney's copyrighted works without authorization for the training and development of AI models and services," according to Variety, the lawyer's letter states, "and by commercially exploiting AI models and services as well as distributing copies of protected works to consumers." Compounding the issue, many of the infringing images are marked with Google logos, creating the false impression that Disney has approved and supported them.
Videos by heise
Disney demands that Google immediately cease making, performing, or distributing any further copies of or derivative works using protected Disney characters. This explicitly includes YouTube. Furthermore, Disney demands that Google immediately take technical measures to ensure that Google products with AI integration are no longer used to generate Disney content.
heise online has invited Google to comment.
(ds)
