By Gavin Boyle
After teasing the integration of AI into its company earlier this year, Disney announced that it is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and allowing the company’s video generation tool, Sora, to use Disney’s IP.
“This agreement shows how AI companies and creative leaders can work together responsibly to promote innovation that benefits society, respect the importance of creativity, and help works reach vast new audiences,” said OpenAI founder Sam Altman.
Related: Wait…AI Is Coming to Disney+?
The three year licensing agreement will allow Sora access to over 200 characters from a variety of franchises owned by Disney including Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar. The deal does not include likeness or voices of actors who have played these specific characters.
“Technological innovation has continually shaped the evolution of entertainment, bringing with it new ways to create and share great stories with the world,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger. “The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works.”
“Bringing together Disney’s iconic stories and characters with OpenAI’s groundbreaking technology puts imagination and creativity directly into the hands of Disney fans in ways we’ve never seen before, giving them richer and more personal ways to connect with the Disney characters and stories they love,” Iger added.
During Disney’s Q4 earnings report in November, the company announced that it would soon introduce a tool onto Disney+ that would allow users to generate shorts of their favorite Disney characters using AI.
“There’s phenomenal opportunities to deploy AI across our direct-to-consumer platforms, both to provide tools that make the platforms more dynamic and more sticky with consumers, but also to give consumers the opportunity to create on our platforms,” Iger said at the time. “AI is going to give us the ability…to provide users of Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user-generated content and to consume user-generated content – mostly short-form – from others.”
Meanwhile, Disney has already taken a first shot at using AI to create unique experiences for its fans when it introduced an AI-powered Darth Vader onto Fortnite. Though this first attempt was rocky – with the AI using some colorful language when prompted by users – it shows that the company believes AI is the future when it comes to its brand interactions.
As AI becomes a more ubiquitous part of our everyday lives, it will be interesting to see how it transforms the entertainment industry, especially as creatives in Hollywood balk at any inclusion of it in their projects.
Read Next: AI Comes to Disney. How Will It Change the Company?
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