On YouTube, AI-generated Disney content: it’s over! But the big-eared firm is not afraid of artificial intelligence. It’s actually quite the opposite. Last week, the entertainment giant signed a historic partnership with OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. While the place of AI in the cultural industry is still a source of virulent debate, Disney welcomes the tool with open arms in the hope of taking advantage of it before others. The exploitation rights for 200 emblematic characters from the studio have been entrusted to OpenAI in order to enable the generation of short videos inspired by these franchises.
This agreement follows promises made by the CEO of the Walt Disney Company last November. Bob Iger then declared that Disney+ would soon receive “the biggest changes, both from an offering and technology perspective, since the service launched in 2019” by offering users “ccreate their own AI-generated content and consume this user-generated content, primarily in short form”.
And to maintain the exclusivity of this functionality, it was necessary to contact competitors, starting with Google. In a letter of formal notice sent the day before the deal with OpenAI, Disney demanded a massive removal of content on YouTube and YouTube Shorts.
More Disney content on YouTube?
Don’t panic, Disney is not going to delete all the videos where its characters appear. This measure concerns exclusively AI-generated content featuring the approximately 200 characters loaned to OpenAI. Little by little, these videos are replaced by a message indicating that a copyright infringement claim has been filed by Disney. Google was particularly keen in implementing this request, presumably to avoid offending the entertainment giant.
“We have a long-standing and mutually beneficial relationship with Disney, and we will continue to collaborate with them” said Google. The company also wanted to show its credentials in terms of regulating AI by specifying: “More generally, we use public data from the open web to develop our AI and have implemented innovative copyright controls, such as Google Extended and Content ID for YouTube, which allow sites and rights holders to control their content.”
The big-eared firm seeks to maintain the exclusivity of this content in order to make it a feature specific to its streaming service. We therefore imagine that other platforms dedicated to video sharing will soon receive the same directives. Content generated by AI like Disney characters is still widely used on TikTok for example, where certain videos are far from the “clean” image that the firm seeks to maintain for its universes. The agreement with OpenAI should therefore put an end to the spread of this type of content which is not always suitable for younger users.
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