Disney Blasts Google As “Virtual Vending Machine” For IP, Accuses YouTube Parent Of Copyright Infringement On “Massive Scale”
The lines are being drawn. Disney today warned rival Google against what it called copyright infringement on a massive scale to train its AI models and from distributing images and videos across its ecosystem, including YouTube.
The warning in a lawyer’s letter from Disney to Google follows news of the Mouse’s landmark deal to invest $1 billion in Sora parent OpenAI, a Google rival.
“Without waiving any rights or remedies, Disney hereby provides notice that Google must remove all infringing Disney content on YouTube and YouTube Shorts that Google has created with its AI Services,” Disney demanded in a letter to Google viewed by Deadline.
This follows cease-and-desist letters that Disney sent earlier to Meta and Character.AI, as well as litigation it filed together with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery against Midjourney and Minimax as Hollywood attempts to control widespread piracy of its IP that, in a world of artificial intelligence, can be now replicated in seconds by a work or keystroke.
Earlier today, it announced a major deal to attempt to harness the new landscape with an investment in OpenAI that creates a framework with its new partner for legal access to its characters and IP.
Google and OpenAI are fierce rivals in the space, with OpenAI chief Sam Altman recently calling a “Code Red” amid advances by Google.
Disney said today that “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 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.” Google’s AI services include Veo, Imagen and Nano Banana.”
It calls the “willful infringement is especially alarming because it is leveraging its dominance in generative AI and across multiple other markets to make its infringing AI Services as widely available as possible” including by integration into products including Google Workspace and the YouTube mobile app. The company is “flooding the market with infringing works, and reaping enormous profits and other value from its unlawful, harmful, and damaging exploitation of Disney’s copyrighted works,” the letter says.
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