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?
Last edited:
-
The new WDWMAGIC iOS app is here!
Stay up to date with the latest Disney news, photos, and discussions right from your iPhone. The app is free to download and gives you quick access to news articles, forums, photo galleries, park hours, weather and Lightning Lane pricing. Learn More -
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
Disney making $1 billion investment in OpenAI, will allow characters on Sora AI video generator
- Thread starter lentesta
- Start date
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
Well-Known Member
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
Well-Known Member
Hate this. Hate this a lot.
There's even a big article yesterday about how deep trouble OpenAI is in.
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:
There's even a big article yesterday about how deep trouble OpenAI is in.
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
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Yikes.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Lighting that money on fire would have been more useful.
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
Well-Known Member
Don’t believe what you read on the internet.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
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
Well-Known Member
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
Well-Known Member
The average consumer does not care about any of that.
Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
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
Well-Known Member
Disstevefan1
Well-Known Member
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
Well-Known Member
A study with a group of people does not represent the entire world population.
Midwest Elitist
Well-Known Member
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
).
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
Well-Known Member
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.
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.
Trueblood
Well-Known Member
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.
