Disney and OpenAI reach a Sora content agreement

Disney and OpenAI announced a three-year licensing agreement covering the use of Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters — more than 200 in total, including Mickey Mouse, Iron Man and Darth Vader — in Sora, OpenAI’s short-form AI video app. Under the deal, Disney also agreed to invest $1 billion in OpenAI in exchange for equity warrants, and to become an OpenAI customer, deploying ChatGPT internally and building products with OpenAI’s API, including for Disney+, which will stream a selection of fan-made Sora clips.

Only the first year of the three-year term is exclusive; after that, Disney is free to license the same characters to rival AI video tools. The agreement does not cover the likenesses or voices of Disney’s actors, which remain separately negotiated.

The deal followed a pattern set at Sora’s September 2025 launch, when OpenAI’s initial opt-out policy let copyrighted characters appear by default and studios, including Disney, objected publicly; OpenAI reversed to an opt-in model within days. Disney had separately sent cease-and-desist notices to other AI companies over unauthorised use of its characters, including Google and Character.AI, and had joined NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery in copyright suits against Midjourney and MiniMax. The agreement with OpenAI marked the first case of a major studio licensing its characters into a generative-video product rather than suing over their appearance there, offering a template — paid consent rather than default permission — that other rights holders were expected to weigh against continued litigation.