The inevitable follow-up of their OpenAI deal. Make a deal with a big GenAI company to get precedent for them licensing your copyrights, then go against everyone else who doesn’t have such a deal.
Disney says Google AI infringes copyright “on a massive scale”
Submitted 3 weeks ago by along_the_road@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/12/disney-says-google-ai-infringes-copyright-on-a-massive-scale/
Comments
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Further proof that copyrights, like patents, only benefit the rich.
Also, AI-generated material still falls into the monkey selfie legal realm, so they are going to have a helluva time trying to copyright what comes out.
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I don’t think they care about monetizing the output, but only about not being sued by the output and making other need to pay 1B to Disney before releasing models
Triumph@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
I mean, that's exactly how those deals work.
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I feel like once they open that door, they shouldn’t get to decide who walks through it. Either they support AI using their characters, or they don’t. I mean, they’re certainly well within their rights to say none of them can do it, and I would support that if that was the way they went, but no, they said one company could use their IP to train its data. It’s a rat race. They’re all going to use it.
MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Not to support Disney or IP/copyright laws here, but that’s not really how that works. A musician can choose to not be on Spotify but be on Apple Music. A movie can be licensed to Netflix and not Hulu. A writer can publish in one paper and refuse to work with another. I think for how these things currently work, that is an important right that holders can claim. If I’m an artist and I want to make an AI generator from just my art, that should not give other companies license to use my are to train their AI.
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Oh, absolutely. I’m just saying that now that it’s out there, it’s going to be on the others whether they like it or not. And they’d have a leg to stand on if they were against AI. But they’re not. They’re working with AI.
I really do get what you’re saying, but what people need to realise about AI is, it doesn’t care about rights. AI is trained off of thousands if not millions of works of art, mostly without permission, let alone compensation. This would be true of Disney IPs even if they weren’t working with AI. But since they are, since they’ve opened that door, it removes the moral concern the rest of us have, coming from the point of view of the artists who were never given a choice, let alone a cheque. We can’t feel sorry for Disney having other AI companies use their characters when it’s used characters from independent artists without even asking.
ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Poor Disney, we are sad for you /s. It sucks when the same things happens to you, right?
Bakkoda@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
The LLM wars have truly begun.
Bougie_Birdie@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Disney just announced yesterday that they were investing a billion dollars into OpenAI. I have a hard time believing any AI company is respecting copyright because infringement is their business model. This sort of reads like “the competition’s product is worse than ours.”
You’re allowed to root for nobody. Sometimes everyone sucks.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Wait a minute, maybe Disney’s on to something…
Yeah, sure, they always take what isn’t theirs to begin with, copyright it, and sue the bejesus off of anybody that crosses them…
But what if this backfires, and Disney brings a lawyer to a lawyer fight and causes a wave of actual legal discovery, here? Like a weird accidental poison pill for the AI industry.
LET ME HOPE
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Well let’s say they get a judge who cares, then Disney money puts it into the supreme Court and Thiel tells the conservatives to beg for their treats and now only billionaires have copyright protection.
Quexotic@beehaw.org 2 weeks ago
I think you root for better antitrust and copyright protections, no? Seems like that author was suffering from a failure of imagination.
winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Maybe they are just being realistic given the current state of affairs. Our regulatory bodies should protect us. But they aren’t.
Midnitte@beehaw.org 2 weeks ago
Or just looking to make that licensing deal woth Google much more expensive than the OpenAI one