After 3 months of a working relationship between Disney and OpenAI, Disney decided to retract after the Sora AI shutdown. Disney was once a corporation that was attempting to stop OpenAI from using their licensed media for their AI generation app. However, in December 2025, Disney reached a 3-year agreement for users to generate AI videos with images from Disney’s catalog. Characters from Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and up to 200 characters from Disney would be licensed for OpenAI to have no repercussions.

This deal lasted for a short amount of time until OpenAI made the choice to shut down Sora. With that, the $1 billion investment from Disney was ended, as a spokesperson stated, “We respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere.”

While this piece of business may have seemed like 2 companies trying to capitalize on a growing industry, it does raise concerns for the future of AI. If a corporation with as much as history and respect as Disney is willing to license their library of content to an AI generation site, will it lead to AI becoming more normalized? The link below shows a Videomaker article that details the Disney and OpenAI deal and how quickly things changed in the span of 3 months.