The Walt Disney Co. has fired off a cease-and-desist letter to Google, claiming that its AI training models and services infringe on its copyrights on a “massive scale.”
The letter was sent on Wednesday, just before the company made the announcement that it has reached an agreement with a Google rival, OpenAI, to provide its characters and IP for use in the latter company’s services.
Disney contended that Google’s “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.”
“Google is intentionally amplifying the scope of its infringement, by making its infringing AI Services available across so many channels to so many consumers, 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,” per the letter from David Singer, the Jenner & Block attorney representing Disney.
Disney previously sent cease-and-desist letters to Meta and Character.AI, and is part of litigation with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery against Midjourney and Minimax.
A Google spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the letter, Disney claims that Google “has refused to implement any technological measures to mitigate or prevent copyright infringement, even though such measures are readily available and being used by Google’s competitors.” The letter adds that Disney has tried to engage Google “for months,” but the tech giant has “done nothing” and the use of its copyrighted works “has only increased” during that period.
The letter alleges that not only has Disney IP been distributed without authorization in AI services but that Google has copied “a large corpus” of copyrighted works in training models. The letter cites models including Veo, Imagen and Nano Banana.
Disney’s letter also cited the ability of uses to generate images and videos via text prompts, including Star Wars characters, Marvel characters, Pixar works, classic animated characters and The Simpsons, among other IP.
“Google operates as a virtual vending machine, capable of reproducing, rendering, and distributing copies of Disney’s valuable library of copyrighted characters and other works on a mass scale,” The letter states. “And compounding Google’s blatant infringement, many of the infringing images generated by Google’s AI Services are branded with Google’s Gemini logo, falsely implying that Google’s exploitation of Disney’s intellectual property is authorized and endorsed by Disney.”
The letter also pointed to Google Gemini, its primary brand, and claimed that it “is treating Disney’s valuable copyrighted characters like its own and making them available to subscribers for a fee.” Disney included the images of Simba and Nala from The Lion King and of Darth Vader that it said were generated by a “simple prompt.” The letter also cited Google use of its AI across its businesses, including YouTube and mobile apps.
Disney included this Darth Vader image in a letter sent to Google as an example of how it says its IP is being exploited, this time in response to a “simple prompt.”
The letter called on Google to cease further copying and distribution of Disney IP in its AI services, as well as to implement technical measures to “ensure that no further outputs” infringe on the company’s works. Disney also called on Google to identify which copyrighted works it has used to train its AI models, and to cease any use of them for such purpose.
AI companies have argued that the use of copyrighted material, particularly in training models, is a “fair use,” a concept that is being litigated in the courts.
The timing of the letter, just as the company announced its agreement with OpenAI, appeared to be no coincidence. A source familiar with Disney executives’ thinking said, “Our agreement with OpenAI demonstrates that the world of AI does not have to be lawless, and that technology innovators and creative industries can work together and thrive if they are willing to respect the value of creators and their works.”
More to come.