Disney's $1 billion investment in OpenAI brings Mickey Mouse to Sora AI's doorstep — will it redefine Hollywood's future?

Earlier today, The Walt Disney Company announced that it is investing $1 billion in OpenAI in a new three-year licensing agreement. The new partnership will allow the ChatGPT maker's Sora AI video generator to create user-prompted social videos that feature more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars from early 2026.

In September, OpenAI launched Sora 2 and a TikTok-esque Sora social app, which redefined the internet. The app generates realistic AI clips that are up to 10 seconds long, some of which can be extremely hard to tell what's real and what's fake.

Following OpenAI's new licensing deal with Disney, it will be interesting to see how it impacts Hollywood's content creation process and, by extension, the loss or creation of job opportunities in the creative industry.

It's worth noting that the agreement doesn't include talent likenesses or voices. What's more, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also indicated that there will be elaborate measures and guardrails in place to control how Disney's characters will be used in Sora.

“We want to participate in what Sam is creating, what his team is creating,” Disney's CEO indicated while speaking to CNBC. “We think this is a good investment for the company.”

Still, Iger emphasizes the importance of respecting and safeguarding creators and their works despite permitting OpenAI to access Disney's copyrighted content.

The OpenAI deal "does not in any way represent a threat to creators at all,” Iger added.

Disney said it will receive warrants to purchase additional equity and will become a major OpenAI customer. A selection of videos generated by users will also be available for streaming on Disney+, potentially allowing the company to hop onto the short-form video content hype like Instagram's Reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok videos.

This news comes as the copyright infringement-related cases against OpenAI continue to rise. OpenAI was recently compelled by a Manhattan judge to produce 20 million chat logs from ChatGPT users in its ongoing court battle with the New York Times. Sam Altman argued that copyright law doesn't categorically prohibit the use of copyrighted content for training AI models while branding it as "fair use".

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