Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google accusing them of copyright infringement on a “massive scale” for use of their works in AI programs.

Disney Demands Google Stop Using IPs in AIs

According to Variety, law firm Jenner & Block sent the letter on behalf of Disney to Google on Wednesday evening, demanding they stop the alleged infringement.

“Google is infringing Disney’s copyrights on a massive scale, by copying a large corpus of
Disney’s copyrighted works without authorization to train and develop generative artificial
intelligence (‘AI’) models and services, and by using AI models and services to commercially exploit and distribute copies of its protected works to consumers in violation of Disney’s copyrights,” the letter states.

The letter includes examples of images generated by prompts in Google’s AI apps, including the Darth Vader image above.

Disney demands Google “immediately cease further copying, publicly displaying, publicly performing, distributing, and creating derivative works of Disney’s copyrighted characters” in “outputs of Google’s AI Services, including through YouTube’s mobile app, YouTube Shorts and YouTube.”

They also said Google must “immediately implement effective technological measures within Google’s AI Services and, as necessary, Google’s suite of products and services in which Google’s AI Services are integrated, to ensure that no future outputs infringe Disney works.”

Disney will not tolerate the unauthorized commercial exploitation of its copyrighted characters and works by so-called AI services. Here, Google’s conduct is particularly harmful because Google is leveraging its market dominance across multiple channels to distribute its AI Services and using the draw and popularity of infringed copyrighted works to help maintain that dominance.

Disney has previously sent cease-and-desist letters to Character.AI and Meta, and joined lawsuits against AI companies Midjourney and MiniMax.

News of this letter broke immediately after Disney and OpenAI announced a new partnership that will allow users to create videos and images using Disney characters.

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