Disney making $1 billion investment in OpenAI, will allow characters on Sora AI video generator

[lentesta]

Disney making $1 billion investment in OpenAI, will allow characters on Sora AI video generator

Disney is investing in OpenAI and has licensed its iconic characters like Mickey Mouse, Ariel and Iron Man to be used in the Sora AI video generator.

www.cnbc.com

What is Disney getting out of this?

$1B in OpenAI equity is like 0.002% of the company. You're trading Mickey Mouse for that?

 

[Trueblood]

Disney making $1 billion investment in OpenAI, will allow characters on Sora AI video generator

Disney is investing in OpenAI and has licensed its iconic characters like Mickey Mouse, Ariel and Iron Man to be used in the Sora AI video generator.

www.cnbc.com

What is Disney getting out of this?

$1B in OpenAI equity is like 0.002% of the company. You're Trading mickey Mouse for that?

The obvious answer is they get $1B in a stock that was up 150% in 2025. I wonder if the discussion was "we'll buy $1B in your stock, you can use our IP to generate videos, and we can use your service at a significant discount for ourselves."

Now I'll sit here waiting for news stories about how Goofy is appearing in AI videos teaching children how to play with matches.

 

[Kamikaze]

Hate this. Hate this a lot.

There's even a big article yesterday about how deep trouble OpenAI is in.

OpenAI Is in Trouble

The start-up is falling behind in the AI race.

www.theatlantic.com

AI the way its being used is a big circle-____ and it will all come crashing down sooner rather than later.

If anyone is interested in how much of a scam AI funding (heck, the entirety of the AI space) is, this is a good place to start:

 

[Disgruntled Walt]

Yikes.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Lighting that money on fire would have been more useful.

 

[Kamikaze]

Absolutely tone-deaf choice by Iger and the Company here. The public sentiment with AI has definitely turned against it. This would have been seen as okay a couple of years ago, but they're behind the curve doing this today.

 

[lentesta]

The obvious answer is they get $1B in a stock that was up 150% in 2025. I wonder if the discussion was "we'll buy $1B in your stock, you can use our IP to generate videos, and we can use your service at a significant discount for ourselves."

Now I'll sit here waiting for news stories about how Goofy is appearing in AI videos teaching children how to play with matches.

Okay. Let's say they turn $1B into $2.5B. And they get access to the models for free instead of ... $1B per year.

In the next year that's $3.5B for ... the rights to 200 Disney characters?

I think even you and I together could get enough people on board to make a better offer than that.

 

[Serpico Jones]

Absolutely tone-deaf choice by Iger and the Company here. The public sentiment with AI has definitely turned against it. This would have been seen as okay a couple of years ago, but they're behind the curve doing this today.

Don’t believe what you read on the internet.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Absolutely tone-deaf choice by Iger and the Company here. The public sentiment with AI has definitely turned against it. This would have been seen as okay a couple of years ago, but they're behind the curve doing this today.

Definitely feels like a result of Iger’s weird desire to be seen as a tech guy. Same reason he has loved name dropping Steve Jobs over the years.

 

[Kamikaze]

Don’t believe what you read on the internet.

Yeah, just believe what the people who want you to use it tell you. This is from June. Its markedly worse since then.

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/science...society/ps_2024-9-15_ai-and-its-impact_00-01/

 

[Serpico Jones]

Yeah, just believe what the people who want you to use it tell you. This is from June. Its markedly worse since then.

View attachment 896771
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/science...society/ps_2024-9-15_ai-and-its-impact_00-01/

The average consumer does not care about any of that.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Disney making $1 billion investment in OpenAI, will allow characters on Sora AI video generator

Disney is investing in OpenAI and has licensed its iconic characters like Mickey Mouse, Ariel and Iron Man to be used in the Sora AI video generator.

www.cnbc.com

What is Disney getting out of this?

$1B in OpenAI equity is like 0.002% of the company. You're trading Mickey Mouse for that?

Just like many, many companies, Disney must embrace AI. They really have no choice.

Although they could have just said they are "embracing AI", and actually do nothing.

 

[Kamikaze]

The average consumer does not care about any of that.

Who do you think they surveyed?

You're wrong. Period.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Who do you think they surveyed?

You're wrong. Period.

I think many folks do not understand how much AI will infiltrate and destroy our daily life until its too late.

This is Skynet happening in real life !!!!

 

[Serpico Jones]

Who do you think they surveyed?

You're wrong. Period.

A study with a group of people does not represent the entire world population.

 

[Midwest Elitist]

For those who are unaware: you can train small models called Loras with images from these official outputs. You then train it on a specific LOCAL generative AI model (stable diffusion, Flux, Qwen, Wan video, etc). You then activate the Lora, and associative words will "trigger it" because now the model has specific information about those images.

Disney is making it easier for the technologically inclined to replace them, once video models improve more (they won't much, LLMs are a bubble ).

 

[ProjectXBlog]

Unbelievable lack of foresight and stupidity on display from Disney, yet again. Aside from being creatively and ethically bankrupt, do they not remember their own AI Darth Vader project in Fortnite this year? Users were able to trick Vader into saying slurs within hours.

Iger and his obsession with being a capital-V Visionary is the worst thing to happen to this company in 100 years, and that’s saying a lot.

 

[DCBaker]

Bob Iger on CNBC:

 

[Trueblood]

Okay. Let's say they turn $1B into $2.5B. And they get access to the models for free instead of ... $1B per year.

In the next year that's $3.5B for ... the rights to 200 Disney characters?

I think even you and I together could get enough people on board to make a better offer than that.

It could be that $1B gets you "a seat at the table" for future features. If OpenAI is the engine Disney has chosen to drive autonomous character interactions with guests, being able to influence development priorities could be valuable.

The magnitude of the deal is similar to the $1.5B investment Disney made in Epic Games (for the unaware, they make Unreal Engine, which is one part of the tech behind The Volume), and I suspect Disney gets a say in features there, too.

I don't know anything, all speculation.

 

[Notes from Neverland]