The first thing I saw this morning when I opened X was an AI-generated trailer for Avengers: Doomsday. Robert Downey Jr’s Doctor Doom stood in a shapeless void alongside Captain America and Reed Richards. It was obvious slop but it was also close in tone and feel of the last five years of Disney’s Marvel movies. As media empires consolidate, nostalgia intensifies, and AI tools spread, Disney’s blockbusters feel more like an excuse to slam recognizable characters together in a contextless morass.
So of course Disney has announced it signed a deal with OpenAI today that will soon allow fans to make their own officially licensed Disney slop using Sora 2. The house that mouse built, and which has been notoriously protective of its intellectual property, opened up the video generator, saw the videos featuring Nazi Spongebob and criminal Pikachu, and decided: We want in.
Archive: http://archive.today/fau2g
Seems like an awkward conflict. If the generated material can’t be copyrighted and the characters are “licensed.”
Can I copyright my ai output if I put my own copy-written character or IP in the corner? Does a logo count? What about a dancing logo character?
If the characters are copyrighted but the story and movie is AI generated, can I just swap them out with my own characters and it be perfectly legal?
Pretty much. Characters only enter into the public domain after the copyright for the first publication of said character lapses or if there is a copyright waiver, such as the CC0. That’s why Steamboat Willie entering the public domain was such a big deal.