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 (HTM) Visit Hacker News on the Web
       
       
       COMMENT PAGE FOR:
 (HTM)   Disney making $1B investment in OpenAI, will allow characters on Sora AI
       
       
        epolanski wrote 3 min ago:
        That's some serious FOMO.
       
        ferguess_k wrote 10 min ago:
        Well I guess the best outcome is that the AI bubble bursts. Gonna be
        way worse if it is actually legit...
       
        andrew_lettuce wrote 43 min ago:
        Comments all act like Disney is giving them $1B, but they are
        essentially producing unlimited Disney IP content through OpenAI, and
        get any value boost on their ownership investment, and get the Disney
        stock bounce from the deal coverage. I don't really like the deal on
        the face value of what we know, but will admit there is huge
        potentially upside and it's very cheap relative to a lot of other
        company AI "strategies"
       
        mrdependable wrote 47 min ago:
        I wonder how the various creative guilds will respond. Seems like they
        are stabbing their team in the back on this one.
       
        otterley wrote 56 min ago:
        What mad world are we living in where Disney — Disney — is paying
        someone to lose control over its IP?
       
          Iolaum wrote 18 min ago:
          Are they losing control though? OpenAI did sign a contract with them
          and that presumably gives them some power. Maybe less than the power
          they had over, for example netflix, but still more than nothing.
          
          P.S. If you can't win them, join them ...
       
          dmix wrote 37 min ago:
          The alternative is they make no money and people still produce them
          using other video gen tools without the copyright filters.
          
          Similar to the music industry piracy battle, it makes more sense to
          work with the big platforms than fight them.
       
            otterley wrote 21 min ago:
            I don’t see the similarity here.
            
            When music piracy was facilitated by corporate entities like
            Napster, the rights holders sued them out of existence, after which
            piracy evolved into a highly distributed problem that was too
            costly to prosecute (you can’t sue everyone using BitTorrent one
            by one). Yes, eventually the music rights holders did facilitate
            commercial distribution, starting with the iTunes Store, and it was
            successful because they satisfied the market’s key demand that
            customers be able to buy one song as a time for 99c, as opposed to
            the whole album, which would often cost upwards of $10. Also, they
            didn’t let customers modify the songs or make derivative works.
            
            Generating Disney-derived content with AI, on the other hand,
            requires massive resources that most individuals don’t possess,
            thus making corporate entities all but essential players in the
            game.  (This may change in a few years as technology improves, but
            we shall see.) And we’re talking about derivative works here, not
            mere copies.
       
            nonethewiser wrote 26 min ago:
            There are many alternatives. Another is they sue the shit out of
            Open AI until you basically can't generate anything related to mice
            or monarchies.
            
            This may be the right move but it's by no means forced.
       
          xhkkffbf wrote 45 min ago:
          I think they're getting some equity in return for the investment. If
          it goes up, Disney makes out. If it doesn't, well, ...
       
            triceratops wrote 28 min ago:
            Why not equity in exchange for rights? The crazy thing is they're
            surrendering both rights and cash.
       
              xhkkffbf wrote 23 min ago:
              Maybe the negotiations established that the rights were worth $X,
              but Disney wanted $X + 1 billion worth of stock?
              
              While many startups will take anyone's money, it can be hard to
              invest in some. And the most desirable are the hardest. So maybe
              Disney was using the IP negotiations to open the door?
       
        pantsforbirds wrote 1 hour 2 min ago:
        I think I'm the only one kind of stoked about this. My kiddos are going
        to LOVE making short films with their favorite Disney Princesses.
       
          amelius wrote 45 min ago:
          Yeah, but Disney will make you pay extra for it, that's for sure.
       
        shadowgovt wrote 1 hour 7 min ago:
        For everyone concerned about the AI systems being trained on
        copyrighted material: this was always the end-game of that argument.
        Once the technology was proven out to be useful, someone with a huge IP
        portfolio was going to slam that portfolio directly into the training
        data to get their own copyright-unencumbered AI.
       
          dfedbeef wrote 33 min ago:
          Copyright unencumbered... For their own characters?? Why would they
          need clearance to generate things trained on their data.
       
        shevy-java wrote 1 hour 12 min ago:
        So the big fatso corporations all rally behind AI.
        
        I don't like this. I don't dispute that AI has some useful use cases,
        but there are tons of time-wasters, such as fake videos generated on
        youtube. So when they now autogenerate everything, the quality will
        further go downwards but they will claim it will go upwards. Well,
        what may go up are the net profits. I don't think the quality will
        really go upwards. They also kind of create a monopoly here. Only
        other big corporations can break in - and they won't because it is
        easier to share the profits in the same market in a guaranteed manner.
        Quite amazing that this can happen. Who needs courts anymore when the
        base system can be gamified?
        
        Then there is also the censorship situation. If you keep on censoring
        stuff, you lose out information. I see this on youtube where Google
        censors cuss words. This leads to rubbish bleeps every some seconds.
        Who wants to hear that? It's so pointless.
       
        dagmx wrote 1 hour 17 min ago:
        Putting aside feelings on AI, and also putting aside worst case
        scenarios of the kind of content (which will happen regardless of what
        they promise), I think this is a terrible move for the brand.
        
        Content saturation works out very poorly for IP holders. The value of
        your brand reduces dramatically , and you reduce excitement for new
        releases.
        
        This is the company that had to walk back its plans to saturate
        streaming and theaters with their content because they ruined the hype
        for Star Wars and Marvel content. Two of the most beloved franchises!
        
        This is just going to make that worse when ever social media feed will
        be blanketed by even more slop.
        
        Unless the gambit is that they expect merch sales to go up, or they
        have a way to guarantee a cut of any used content. I’m sure there are
        some IP infringement lawyers who have basically secured a life time of
        work with this announcement.
       
          dmix wrote 28 min ago:
          > Content saturation works out very poorly for IP holders.
          
          That really depends on how the culture of media consumption changes.
          It's very different than the world of movie theaters and TV. Most
          people are using social media to consume the majority of their
          content. This at least helps constantly inject their characters into
          the mainstream culture, when they can no longer dominate TV/cinema
          and streaming platforms already saturate their characters with high
          volume.
          
          The biggest risk IMO is if the short content being produced is more
          entertaining than what they officially produce or it turns into a
          mini-culture they don't have influence over, and they struggle to
          profit off the old stuff.
          
          They will essentially be competing with their own IP.
       
        ossner wrote 1 hour 25 min ago:
        Others have pointed out the problems of trolls generating racist or
        otherwise controversial content using Disney characters and this being
        short-sighted by Disney, but I think this could just be another case of
        "no such thing as bad PR".
        
        People will undoubtedly generate reprehensible things using these
        characters, and I think that's exactly what Disney wants because it's
        an easy way to make their characters go viral.
       
          seydor wrote 58 min ago:
          Their characters are way past virality
       
            fudged71 wrote 33 min ago:
            They’re way past being relevant and that is the problem they are
            solving… getting mindshare again.
       
          jeffwask wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
          It's strange though because if you know anything about Disney and how
          the manage the characters in media and at the parks, they are
          extremely protective of the brand and image of the characters.
          Imagineers have very strict rules around virtual character meet and
          greets and etc.
          
          Allowing their characters to be used in AI generated content blows
          that all out of the water unless there are some extremely tight guard
          rails.
          
          They are a half step from flooding the market with Disney Princess
          porn.
       
            squigz wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
            > They are a half step from flooding the market with Disney
            Princess porn.
            
            I would think that whatever demand there is for that is already
            filled.
       
        lunias wrote 1 hour 25 min ago:
        OpenAI is my least favorite AI company and Disney is (recently) among
        my least favorite entertainment conglomerates. Sounds like a match made
        in heaven. Good luck with the investment.
       
          dominotw wrote 1 hour 4 min ago:
          openai prbly is my most favorite because everyone else is obsessed
          with job replacement as the final goal
       
        ChrisArchitect wrote 1 hour 28 min ago:
        OpenAI post: [1] ( [2] )
        
 (HTM)  [1]: https://openai.com/index/disney-sora-agreement/
 (HTM)  [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46231493
       
        seydor wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
        Oh the memes
       
        MallocVoidstar wrote 1 hour 31 min ago:
        Related: [1] > Walt Disney has sent a cease-and-desist letter to
        Alphabet's Google, CNBC reported on Thursday.
        
 (HTM)  [1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/disney-sends-cease-and-desist...
       
        dboreham wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
        Shouldn't OpenAI be paying Disney?
       
          s1mon wrote 1 hour 1 min ago:
          That was my first thought. When I saw 'Disney' and 'OpenAI' in a
          headline together I assumed the money was flowing the other way
          around. Certainly other rights holders like the NYTimes are looking
          for the cash to flow the opposite direction (they're suing because of
          allegations that OpenAI trained on copyrighted material which can be
          reproduced through prompting). Unless this investment somehow is
          structured so that Disney gets stock which will potentially be worth
          orders of magnitude more later...
       
            sofixa wrote 36 min ago:
            > they're suing because of allegations that OpenAI trained on
            copyrighted material which can be reproduced through prompting
            
            Are OpenAI even denying this?
       
        zorked wrote 1 hour 42 min ago:
        $1B, how many hours of runway does that buy.
       
          mekdoonggi wrote 1 hour 31 min ago:
          -2 months because they need to spend $2b to make this revenue.
          Investors should look for a bump of another -8 forward P/E. Huge
          upside (negative) potential.
       
        tonyedgecombe wrote 1 hour 51 min ago:
        Surely OpenAI should be paying Disney for the rights to their content.
        What an upside down period we are living in.
       
          dist-epoch wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
          You pay for advertisement and product placement.
          
          Not the other way around.
          
          We live in an atenttion economy, if Disney content is not in your
          face on all mediums (which now include AI slop), they lose money.
       
            nonethewiser wrote 20 min ago:
            >You pay for advertisement and product placement.
            
            Well, no. Disney does not pay Hasbro or Mattel to use their
            characters. It does not pay clothing producers. So no, you dont
            have to pay people to use your IP because it's just advertising.
            Disney's IP is their core product.
            
            You can make the argument they should let Sora use it to advertise.
            But that's not necessarily how it works. And for good reason - fan
            content doesnt necessarily benefit Disney in a measurable,
            controlled way. Furthermore, the IP is the thing they themselves
            are trying to sell you.
       
            echelon wrote 1 hour 8 min ago:
            The RIAA got it their way with Suno and Udio.
            
            Sam Altman must be an unbelievable salesman. Iger is tired and is
            looking for a way out. He's quit once already, but got dragged back
            because of Chapek.
            
            I spoke with several folks in the C-suite Disney leadership a year
            ago about AI - Disney is learning and trying literally everything
            they can to capitalize on AI. Every division is experimenting,
            including ABC and ESPN. I spoke with the Pixar folks - of course
            they're using it too. They want to see what works.
            
            They're internally partnering and trying out lots of companies and
            tools. It's been a mandate for a long time. Well before it was
            kosher in greater Hollywood. Before Coca Cola's first AI Christmas
            video last year. Disney was an early believer.
            
            I've heard through the grapevine (companies talking to investors)
            that Disney has been working with multiple foundation video model
            companies. One of them was trying to animate parts of the live
            action Moana film, supposedly. Not the one you've read about in the
            news that got rejected. A much better funded one. Not sure if it
            made it into the film - I suppose we'll find out soon.
            
            Do recall, also, that Disney has publicly rebuffed OpenAI's
            proposals twice in the past. Something changed, and my guess is the
            Netflix/WBD deal.
       
        dfedbeef wrote 2 hours 16 min ago:
        Disney shareholders, feel free to make images of Iger, Mickey, and
        Br'er Rabbit lighting piles on money on fire.
       
          hnlmorg wrote 16 min ago:
          The original depiction of Mickey Mouse is legally public domain
          anyway
          
 (HTM)    [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_based_on_a_copyright-fre...
       
        solumunus wrote 2 hours 17 min ago:
        Oof.
       
        fidotron wrote 2 hours 17 min ago:
        Is this their YouTube goes legit moment? i.e. Disney get paid (by
        indirect means so far) for characters on OpenAI but not (yet) Gemini?
        
        If this includes exclusivity deals it could be big.
       
        giancarlostoro wrote 2 hours 19 min ago:
        This will not end well for Disney, there were certain historical
        characters removed from Sora 2 because people kept making racist videos
        that are hard to censor, and it became increasingly unhinged. This
        feels like another circular investment where Disney is hoping to make
        money back I'm sure. On the other hand, assuming they do the freemium
        stuff, I look forward to making a few videos of my daughters favorite
        Disney princesses "talking" to her.
       
          reaperducer wrote 29 min ago:
          I look forward to making a few videos of my daughters favorite Disney
          princesses "talking" to her.
          
          I look forward to chatting with Pluto and Goofy and asking why one
          has to wear pants when both of them are dogs.
       
            baggachipz wrote 7 min ago:
            Given that only one of the dogs can talk, you're set to get only
            one answer. Though I suspect that the ability to talk bestows
            bodily shame, based on this anecdotal evidence.
       
          yreg wrote 41 min ago:
          I understand that Disney might care about this, but I don't see why
          they should.
          
          What exactly does “fanart” (no matter how distasteful and
          controversial) change?
          
          Let people generate whatever fictional character they want.
       
            notyourwork wrote 38 min ago:
            It only works until Mickey Mouse shows up on your Tiktok feed
            lynching an African American and doing a sieg heil salute. Are you
            sure Disney wants that or would not care about that??
       
              zahlman wrote 31 min ago:
              The question is why it shows up on your Tiktok feed.
       
                lp0_on_fire wrote 8 min ago:
                I thought it was well known and generally accepted that the
                social medial companies push controversial click/rage bait to
                keep people “engaged”?
       
          hbosch wrote 52 min ago:
          >This will not end well for Disney
          
          I have faith that the Parks Imagineers will soon be installing Sora
          Stalls in and around every attraction in Disney World.
       
          DeathArrow wrote 1 hour 1 min ago:
          People are already doing whatever clips they want to using open
          source models.
       
          jerf wrote 1 hour 17 min ago:
          "there were certain historical characters removed from Sora 2 because
          people kept making racist videos that are hard to censor, and it
          became increasingly unhinged"
          
          Also Google "Elsagate" to see what sorts of things people would like
          to do with Disney characters. Or a YouTube search for Elsagate.
          
          The other thing I'd point out is that people kind of seem to forget
          this, but it isn't a requirement that AI video be generated, then
          shoveled straight out without modification. Elsagate shows the level
          of effort that people are willing to put into this (a strange
          combination of laziness, but extreme effort poured into enabling that
          laziness). You can use the blessed Disney video generator to generate
          something, then feed it into another less controlled AI system to
          modify it into something Disney wouldn't want. Or a video of a Disney
          character doing something innocent can be easily turned into
          something else; it's not hard to ask the AI systems to put something
          "against a green screen", or with a bit more sophistication,
          something that can be motion tracked with some success and extracted.
          
          "A front camera shot of Cinderella crouching down, repeatedly putting
          a cucumber in and out of her mouth. She is against a green screen." -
          where ever that video is going, Disney isn't going to like it. And
          that's just a particularly obvious example, not the totality of all
          the possibilities.
          
          Just putting controls on the AI video output itself isn't going to be
          enough for Disney.
       
            cm2012 wrote 29 min ago:
            Sora has good enough controls it is basically impossible to make it
            do a dirty video like that.
       
            zahlman wrote 32 min ago:
            > Also Google "Elsagate" to see what sorts of things people would
            like to do with Disney characters. Or a YouTube search for
            Elsagate.... Elsagate shows the level of effort that people are
            willing to put into this (a strange combination of laziness, but
            extreme effort poured into enabling that laziness).
            
            I still wonder what motivates the people behind that sort of thing.
            It'd be easy to understand if it were just porn, but what's been
            described to me is just... bizarre.
       
            Y_Y wrote 56 min ago:
            Don't use a cucumber if you're going to be subtracting the green
            screen
       
              s1mplicissimus wrote 35 min ago:
              i assumed it was the egg plant, guess i'm getting old
       
              iamacyborg wrote 42 min ago:
              I think the idea is you want the cucumber also removed so it can
              be replaced with something else…
       
          podgietaru wrote 1 hour 27 min ago:
          I actually straight up don't think they give a shit anymore.
          
          I think decorum works in an environment where decorum is the norm,
          but we have entered a political moment where that is no longer the
          case. And I think that this kind of thing bleeds so heavily into
          culture that they no longer give a shit about having their characters
          next to it.
          
          They have enough plausible deniability; they did not create the
          content. I think that's enough for them, in this moment.
       
            afavour wrote 27 min ago:
            When I became a parent I was really surprised at how much crap
            Disney puts out. My previous exposure had just been their
            blockbuster movies which showed a close attention to detail. But
            you scratch under the surface and it's an endless pile of awful
            quality clothing, crappy lunchboxes, that kind of thing. To the
            point where you assume it's an unauthorized rip off until you
            discover they license to anyone.
            
            And to say nothing of the shoddy quality of their TV shows. Mickey
            Mouse Clubhouse's lazy CG animation and unimaginative storytelling
            is shocking given Mickey is supposed to be their signature
            character. They just don't care. And I think it does have an
            impact: my kids tired of Clubhouse very quickly and have little
            connection to Mickey and friends. Compare that to say,
            Dreamworks’ Gabby’s Dollhouse which they loved.
            
            Disney is propped up by its tentpole features but their bench is
            incredibly weak. There are only so many Blueys you can buy to make
            up the difference.
       
              scrumbledober wrote 20 min ago:
              The animation quality of mickey mouse clubhouse was appalling
              when I first had kids. They seem to have decided to care about
              that, as the animation on mickey mouse clubhouse + is a marked
              improvement.
       
              roywiggins wrote 23 min ago:
              Fond-ish memories of Disney's direct-to-vhs push in the 90s
              
 (HTM)        [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-straight-to-video...
       
            philistine wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
            Yeah, basically Disney invested a billion dollar in Pregnant Elsa
            Spider-Man Beach Castle.
       
              lumost wrote 31 min ago:
              They may be viewing this as an inevitable outcome with open
              models/fly-by-night providers/providers in more liberal
              copy-right jurisdictions.
              
              They can either invest in mass classification and enforcement
              operations or gain some revenue share from it.
       
          bko wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
          Why is this a problem with Disney?
          
          Who cares? Online trolls make inappropriate videos with characters.
          Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it.
          
          It's so exhausting that companies are overly cautious about
          everything and let a tiny niche of internet culture drive these
          decisions. If you get obscene material in your social media feeds,
          you will continue to see this kind of stuff except maybe with some
          Disney IP. If not, it will have no impact to your life.
          
          But practical things that affect 99% of people like you mentioned
          will be better, like your child wants to hear Mickey wish him happy
          birthday. So I applaud this.
       
            oceanplexian wrote 15 min ago:
            Thank you.
            
            Sad I had to scroll this far to find a comment that wasn't
            pro-censorship of Fan Art because a character they saw on the
            internet offended someone's Protestant values.
       
            nonethewiser wrote 28 min ago:
            I agree with you completely but I'm absolutely shocked that Disney
            would agree to this. They are extremely protective of how their IP
            is used. Famously so.
       
          bombcar wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
          Grok create already lets you make 6 second videos, though sometimes
          you have to say "Italian plumber" or "famous princesses".
       
            dmix wrote 1 hour 16 min ago:
            It's definitely not a war you're going to win simply via copyright
            claims to the big chat interfaces. This stuff will happen
            regardless. Especially as more open high quality LLMs role out.
            
            They might as well have some direct say in the matter with the big
            companies by creating relationships and profiting via licensing.
       
              echelon wrote 1 hour 13 min ago:
              The AI IP lines are being drawn now.
              
              The IP holders will sue or DMCA the platforms, not the users.
              
              First Grok, then eventually YouTube.
              
              Then they'll charge licensing fees.
              
              Are also: RIAA wrt Suno, Udio.
       
                spwa4 wrote 18 min ago:
                Pretty sure Youtube is constantly being sued for copyright
                violation by now.
                
                The question is what will happen when "the platform" is a model
                downloaded on torrent sites and just generates movies from a
                prompt. On the plus side: excellent compression ratio. On the
                down side: discussion with your kids about how at the end Snow
                White did not transform into a gigantic mech and blew up the
                Evil Queen with rockets. Must be your old memory, dad!
       
                dmix wrote 40 min ago:
                They will be DMCA'ing the social media posts which is nothing
                new.
                
                The big models will and already have copyright filters on,
                people are just working around them which will always be a
                battle. They also don't host the videos they create themselves
                on OpenAI/Grok.
                
                As I said in my comment these videos are not all going to be
                via the mainline Grok/ChatGPT interfaces and alternative video
                generators will eventually become widely accessible to the
                public.
       
                  echelon wrote 2 min ago:
                  It won't move the needle if users have access to unfiltered
                  Wan, Comfy, local, etc.
                  
                  The majority of creation will happen directly through
                  YouTube, Meta, TikTok, and Sora.
                  
                  Platforms and IP rights holders won't police the 0.1%.
                  They'll negotiate deals with the platforms. If they don't
                  license Elsa, Marvel, Pokemon, etc. then the platform
                  wholesale will lose access to the IPs.
                  
                  Platforms will have to pay.
       
          postalcoder wrote 1 hour 51 min ago:
          Disney is not the same company it was 20 years ago.
          
          2025 Disney encourages children to gamble and gives Pat McAfee
          significant visibility.
       
            wooger wrote 1 hour 18 min ago:
            What has Pat Mcafee got to do with anything, is he somehow a
            controversial figure now?
       
              jairuhme wrote 1 hour 15 min ago:
              I think its just that people either love him or hate him and it
              seems like OP is part of the latter group
       
                postalcoder wrote 1 hour 8 min ago:
                I don’t have an opinion on him, despite the suggestiveness of
                my comment. He’s more illustrative of a spirit that Disney at
                a time did not have an appetite for.
       
                  irishcoffee wrote 44 min ago:
                  Pat Mcafee catching strays (He has had his show for ~6 years)
                  but Screamin' A Smith gets a pass?
                  
                  Your bias is showing.
       
                    postalcoder wrote 35 min ago:
                    Stephen A Smith has done as much to harm ESPN's brand than
                    any other figure. Please don't assume my biases from whom I
                    failed to mention – I could have used SAS instead of Pat
                    and my point would have been the same.
                    
                    Perhaps I should have expected that the conversation would
                    get pulled this way but it's not where I wanted it to go.
       
            godzillabrennus wrote 1 hour 40 min ago:
            Disney is the same company as it was 20 years ago. In fact, it's
            the same company as it was 100 years ago. They only care about
            profit. They do just enough brand management to preserve the profit
            motive.
       
              meesles wrote 1 hour 1 min ago:
              I firmly disagree and think this shallow take dishonors a pretty
              great man. While not perfect, Disney gave us the bedrock of
              American children's culture which has been a soft tool for the US
              for generations. Not to mention technology and other
              advancements. I'm not a Disney nut, but the man was one-of-a-kind
              and an impressive industrialist who instilled a great culture of
              innovation and a deep love of children and play. All things I
              value.
       
                CodingJeebus wrote 20 min ago:
                > While not perfect
                
                Yep, Disney was also a leading producer of racist tropes and
                content during Jim Crow. Historical clips of Mickey Mouse
                characters putting on minstrel shows with blackface alongside
                other racist stereotypes like crows can easily be found
                online[0]. Not to mention Song of the South[1], a film Disney
                produced based on Uncle Remus stories following slaves who
                happily live on a Georgia plantation. Disney has, of course,
                done their best to scrub these entries from history, but they
                played a major role in depicting racist tropes to kids for
                decades.
                
                0: [1] 1:
                
 (HTM)          [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/b5j4T9E8PuE
 (HTM)          [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_the_South
       
              jeffwask wrote 1 hour 15 min ago:
              To be fair to Walt Disney, he cared about a lot beyond profit and
              believed in advancing technology and society in a way modern
              corporate leaders absolutely do not. He was no saint but he's a
              far cry from modern CEO's.
       
                godzillabrennus wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
                To be fair, Walt Disney partnered with his brother Roy Disney,
                and they co-founded and ran the Walt Disney Company (and the
                iterations before it). These iterations of the Disney Company
                were never just Walt Disney.
       
                  jeffwask wrote 40 min ago:
                  Yes, but if you watch any documentaries about early Disney
                  and listen to those people talk everything was about Walt's
                  vision even after death they would ask "What would Walt want
                  or do?" He was a figure whose influence and vision is on
                  another level in American History (both good and bad) and
                  early Disney was Walt no matter who was in charge on paper or
                  even if Walt was still alive. That only started to change
                  under Eisner. Roy was the one who kept Walt grounded so
                  ambition shrunk but they stayed the course Walt set.
       
              DoughnutHole wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
              Companies can have additional motives to profit, and they’re
              more likely to when control is concentrated just because
              individual people have multiple desires.
              
              This was certainly the case with early Disney because Walt Disney
              was a megalomaniac utopian. I don’t think the original Epcot
              plans ever had a reasonable chance of being profitable, but Walt
              pushed them because he believed he was the saviour of urbanism in
              America.
       
              postalcoder wrote 1 hour 25 min ago:
              Yes, perhaps if we deflated Disney’s moral rot by a diversified
              basket of other morally-rotted goods, I suppose we’d be able to
              conclude that Disney is perhaps the same company.
              
              Outside that effort, I see a company once famous for its
              prudishness now unafraid of shame.
       
              caminante wrote 1 hour 26 min ago:
              Amen. Blaming Disney for bad content is like blaming politicians.
              
              Who asked for the content? Who elected the politicians?
              
              **[Jiminy] crickets**
       
                armenarmen wrote 59 min ago:
                Fwiw I think the all US presidents since Clinton were elected
                on a non interventionist/pacifist campaign. Blaming the voters
                when every one of them (less so with Biden) violated those
                promises is a bit unfair, if you still believe in democracy.
       
                  dragonwriter wrote 46 min ago:
                  Almost every one of them was elected again, often by wider
                  margins (the only exception losing to another one of them)
                  after deatroying any illusion innthat direction you might
                  argue was produced by their campaign positions, so I don't
                  think you can absolved the American electorate here, even if
                  one agrees that their campaign before taking office met your
                  description.
       
                AznHisoka wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
                Garbage in, garbage out, as someone wise once said
       
          impulser_ wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
          I guess it will depend on how good their security is, because I'm
          assuming Disney is entering this deal with hard guidelines on what
          will be allowed.
       
            edoceo wrote 1 hour 18 min ago:
            AI with hard guidelines? I don't think that will work.
       
              pjc50 wrote 22 min ago:
              "Hard guidelines" is making me think of the Pirate Code from
              Disney's Pirates of The Caribbean.
       
            bilbo0s wrote 1 hour 43 min ago:
            This.
            
            Don't believe for a second that Sora will allow you to make racist
            content with Disney characters.
            
            That said, there are a lot of other models out there that care
            about neither licensing nor alignment. So those will allow you to
            make racist content. Then you can do whatever you like with that
            generated content.
            
            A lot of IP owners will learn that there is more than one way to
            skin a cat. It's easier than people think to turn children's
            characters, like say, Hermoine, into a raging racist. And there's
            very little technically speaking that they can do to stop it.
            
            But yes, on OpenAI specific properties, they can definitely stop it
            dead in its tracks. They can even get better at stopping it over
            time. In fact, the more users try to generate it, the better the
            system will get at stopping it.
       
              doug_durham wrote 2 min ago:
              I don't think that you will ever be able to generate Disney
              characters with the Sora app.  Sora is both a model and an app. 
              Instead I think that there will be a heavily guardrailed
              specialized app where you can do some highly restricted things
              for the opportunity for the content to show up on Disney+.  Think
              of it as "Disney art! Powered by Sora".
       
              butlike wrote 13 min ago:
              Great, so censorship by attrition.
       
              dragonwriter wrote 16 min ago:
              > Don't believe for a second that Sora will allow you to make
              racist content with Disney characters.
              
              Don’t believe for a minute that whatever filters it uses will
              be sensitive enough to the way racist content is constructed to
              stop people from doing just that.
       
              corobo wrote 20 min ago:
              How are they going to stop it?
              
              A certain combination of nonstandard characters will make an AI
              character drop an n-word no problem
              
              I guess they could chuck the output through whisper or something
              to see if it transcribes back to anything dodgy?
              
              LLM security feels very ball of sand held together with duct tape
              haha
       
              zrobotics wrote 1 hour 39 min ago:
              I'm sure that's what Disney's lawyers specified in the contracts
              and what their execs expect. However, judging by how LLM controls
              have gone in the past, I'm fully expecting to see a slew of awful
              content featuring Disney's characters in the days after this
              launches. OpenAI also probably won't ever be able to actually
              stop people from generating harmful content with the characters,
              but the volume of awful stuff will probably eventually slow down
              as people get bored and move onto the next controversial thing.
       
          ipaddr wrote 2 hours 3 min ago:
          This might end well for Disney.  This provides a different marketing
          angle to bring in younger people to Disney.  The filters will block a
          lot of the sexual violence content.  The original cartoons are deemed
          racist by some so this won't open a door already opened.
          
          But it is another circular investment to throw on the AI bubble pile.
       
            smith7018 wrote 1 hour 44 min ago:
            Is it circular, though? Is an AI company giving Disney $1B?
       
              andrew_lettuce wrote 48 min ago:
              If just the news of the deal boosts Disney stock enough to pay
              for the deal, then yes. Or if it boosts OpenAI valuation because
              they now have Disney IP enough to pay off on Disney's investment,
              it is basically Disney producing content indirectly.
       
          qmr wrote 2 hours 10 min ago:
          Sora?
          
 (HTM)    [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sora_(Kingdom_Hearts)
       
            throw4847285 wrote 44 min ago:
            I had the same thought. Finally, Sora will be teaming up with all
            your favorite Disney characters! Didn't that happen already?
            
            It's just a funny coincidence.
       
            tecleandor wrote 2 hours 5 min ago:
            It's also the text-to-video model from OpenAI
            
 (HTM)      [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sora_(text-to-video_model)
       
          tiahura wrote 2 hours 12 min ago:
          And, don't forget to figure in that OpenAI has indicated they're
          getting into porn.
       
            embedding-shape wrote 1 hour 59 min ago:
            Is this about when Sam mentioned they want to continue/start
            letting people do lewd texting with LLMs? Or are you talking about
            actual pornography?
       
              dragonwriter wrote 8 min ago:
              The “lewd texting with LLM” will be a tool for writing actual
              pornography, and in workflows for image and video pornography,
              even if the image and video generation doesn’t happen on
              OpenAI’s platform (in fact, people are using ChatGPT and other
              major AI engines as tools in that already, but loosening the
              filters were facilitate that even more on OpenAI’s platform.)
              
              OpenAI knows that, and the people interested in that capability
              know that, even if many of the other people seeing the marketing
              about it don't.
       
              complianceowl wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
              It's hard to tell.
       
          empath75 wrote 2 hours 17 min ago:
          reposting what i said in the other thread:
          
          > There is no way the character licensing survives an hour of contact
          with the public, unless it is _extremely_ restricted. I can't imagine
          a worse job than trying to "curate" the torrent of sewage that is
          going to get created. Deadpool is pretty much the only Disney-owned
          property this makes sense for.
          And I say this as someone who _likes_ using Sora.
       
        tiahura wrote 2 hours 46 min ago:
        Iger and Altman on CNBC at 10:30.
       
       
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