Disney Slams Google’s AI for Copyright Infringement, Calls It ‘Virtual Vending Machine’ for Intellectual Property
The lines are drawn. Disney today warned rival Google of what it calls massive copyright infringement to train its AI models and distribute images and videos across its ecosystem, including YouTube.
The warning in a Disney lawyer’s letter to Google follows news of Mouse’s historic deal to invest $1 billion in Sora’s parent company, OpenAI, a Google rival.
“Without waiving any rights or remedies, Disney hereby gives notice that Google must remove all infringing Disney content on YouTube and YouTube Shorts that Google has created with its AI services,” Disney requested in a letter to Google viewed by Deadline.
This follows cease and desist letters Disney sent earlier to Meta and Character.AI, as well as litigation it filed with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery versus Midjourney and Minimax as Hollywood attempts to control widespread piracy of its intellectual property which, in a world of artificial intelligence, can now be reproduced in seconds by a work or a keystroke.
Earlier today it announced a major deal to try to exploit the new landscape with an investment in OpenAI that creates a framework with its new partner for legal access to its characters and intellectual property.
Google and OpenAI are fierce rivals in this space, with OpenAI chief Sam Altman recently calling it a “Code Red” amid Google’s advances.
Disney said today that “Google is infringing on Disney’s copyrights on a large scale, by copying a vast body of Disney’s copyrighted works without authorization to train and develop generative artificial intelligence models and services, and by using AI models and services to commercially exploit and distribute copies of its copyrighted works to consumers in violation of Disney’s copyrights.” » Google’s AI services include Veo, Imagen and Nano Banana.
He considers that “the deliberate infringement is particularly alarming because it exploits its dominance in generative AI and several other markets to make its infringing AI services as widely available as possible”, including through integration into products such as Google Workspace and the YouTube mobile application. The company is “flooding the market with infringing works and reaping enormous profits and other values from its illegal, harmful and damaging exploitation of Disney’s copyrighted works,” the letter states.
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