According to detailed reports published by the entertainment industry authorities Deadline and Variety, Google has acknowledged and complied with a formal cease and desist order issued by The Walt Disney Company. In response to Disney’s legal directive, the tech giant has removed an undisclosed, though apparently significant, number of AI-generated videos that incorporated Disney’s proprietary intellectual properties. While neither publication disclosed an exact count, both concur that the amount likely reaches into the dozens—an estimation that implies a focused and deliberate enforcement action rather than a mass takedown.
This legal intervention coincided intriguingly with Disney’s newly announced strategic partnership with OpenAI, Google’s most formidable competitor in the artificial intelligence market. As revealed on Thursday, Disney entered into a multibillion-dollar collaboration that includes a $1 billion investment in OpenAI. Under the terms of this accord, OpenAI is also granted official permission to utilize Disney-owned characters and stories within outputs produced by its Sora family of advanced video-generation models. Notably, industry insiders report that Disney’s cease and desist notice to Google was dispatched just one day prior to this announcement. According to Deadline, the timing suggests that the letter was a preemptive protective measure, likely reflecting frustrations from earlier, unproductive discussions between the two companies. In an interview with CNBC, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger confirmed that the correspondence followed prior attempts at negotiation that had failed to yield satisfactory results for Disney.
The offending material, as identified by trade publications, appears to have been created using Google’s experimental AI video model, Veo. Evidence indicates that Veo-hosted creations featured recognizable elements from multiple Disney-owned universes—including, but not limited to, the Star Wars saga, The Simpsons, and characters connected to Marvel’s expansive cinematic realm, most notably the irreverent antihero Deadpool. Variety reported that even Disney’s flagship character, Mickey Mouse, was among the intellectual properties cited in the takedown notice.
Additional testimony from Reddit users, while anecdotal, provides a compelling context for the controversy. Approximately six months prior, Veo’s copyright safeguards were reportedly relaxed for a short period, which precipitated a flood of videos skirting dangerously close to outright copyright infringement. During this episode, AI-generated interpretations of Marvel and other Disney materials proliferated widely. If those works resembled the now-removed videos—particularly one widely shared online that appears to have clearly used unlicensed Marvel imagery—then Disney’s legal response can easily be viewed as a straightforward assertion of its intellectual property rights.
However, the inclusion of Mickey Mouse complicates the narrative. The character’s earliest incarnations, originating with the first series of short films released nearly a century ago, have now entered the public domain, technically placing those foundational versions of Mickey in the hands of the global public rather than the corporate entity that originally created him. Nevertheless, Disney continues to hold valid trademarks associated with the character’s modern image and brand usage—legal protections designed to prevent marketplace confusion, rather than to reassert expired copyrights. Furthermore, only material derived from the first approximately fifteen Mickey Mouse films is unequivocally in the public domain; later iterations remain under the company’s control. Consequently, AI outputs that combine public-domain Mickey imagery with elements of still-protected content, or that employ Disney’s trademarked depictions, could easily infringe upon existing intellectual property rights.
One example circulating online, also shared around six months ago, features a costumed Mickey Mouse character—apparently filmed at a Disney theme park—engaging in a mock reality television–style confrontation with a human participant. Even though the characterization borders on parody, its setting and representation could place it within a gray area between permissible creative expression and unlawful use of Disney’s proprietary marks.
Meanwhile, OpenAI’s newly inked agreement with Disney adds a parallel dimension to the story. According to the company’s official statements, the partnership will endure for three years and encompass a licensing arrangement covering more than two hundred characters from the Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars portfolios. Under this program, users will be permitted to generate AI-assisted videos incorporating these beloved properties, and selected creations may even find distribution on Disney’s own streaming platform, Disney+. While observers might reasonably question whether AI-generated fan content could match the enduring artistry of Disney’s cinematic milestones—such as the 1940 classic *Pinocchio* or the 1961 triumph *One Hundred and One Dalmatians*—the collaboration nevertheless signals an ambitious experiment in redefining entertainment creation in the age of artificial intelligence.
Sourse: https://gizmodo.com/google-has-taken-down-ai-generated-content-following-disneys-cease-and-desist-2000698254
