As Disney has gone into business with OpenAI, the Mouse House is accusing Google of copyright infringement on a “massive scale” using AI models and services to “commercially exploit and distribute” infringing images and videos.
On Wednesday evening, attorneys for Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google, demanding that Google stop the alleged infringement in its AI systems.
“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,” reads the letter to Google’s general counsel from law firm Jenner & Block on behalf of Disney.
According to the letter, which Variety has reviewed, Disney alleges that Google’s AI systems and services infringe Disney characters including those from Frozen, the Lion King, Moana, the Little Mermaid, Deadpool, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and Star Wars. In its letter, Disney included examples of images it claims were generated by text prompts in Google’s AI apps, including of Darth Vader (pictured above).
The allegations against Google follows cease-and-desist letters that Disney sent earlier to Meta and Character.AI, as well as litigation Disney filed together with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery against AI companies Midjourney and Minimax alleging copyright infringement.
Reps for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Disney’s letter to Google demands that 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.”
In addition, Disney 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,” Disney’s cease-and-desist letter to Google says. “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.”
