A bit of groundbreaking news that has managed to fly under the radar: The Walt Disney Company has officially reached an agreement with OpenAI. Beginning in early 2026, Disney will allow more than 200 of its IP characters to be used in Sora AI and ChatGPT image generation. In exchange, Disney is making a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI. Note that this is not the same as just spending $1 billion on OpenAi. As an equity investment, OpenAI will work with Disney to develop AI tools for Disney’s In-house software and teams, and Disney will own a portion of OpenAI.
This three-year licensing agreement covers characters across Disney’s major franchises, including Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and Disney Animation, Zootopia included. As part of the collaboration, Disney will also feature select “fan-made” Sora AI videos on Disney+, marking one of the first large-scale studio partnerships of this kind.
Under the deal, Sora users will be able to generate short videos featuring the approved characters. However, the agreement does not include the rights to talent likenesses or voices, so recreating voice actors won’t be permitted. For ChatGPT, this expands image-generation capabilities, allowing users to create still images featuring those Disney characters.
You can read Disney’s full announcement here.
It’s also worth noting that the team overseeing Disney’s OpenAI investment strategy is separate from the animation and storytelling creative teams. Director and CCO Jared Bush recently shared his own perspective on AI in filmmaking during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, emphasizing the irreplaceable role of human artistry:
“That’s so well said. The thing I think is, human creativity is at the core of every movie. A movie is not one person voicing ideas into reality. It’s 700 people bringing their experiences and their perspectives. Those 700 points of view, what makes something profound, can’t be replaced.”
He also joked about where he would welcome a little AI assistance:
” I don’t want AI to write my scripts for me. If I’m writing a script and my dog barfs on the floor and I have to stop writing, I’d like AI to come and clean up the barf so that I can continue to work on my stories.”
—Jared Bush, The Hollywood Reporter, 12/9/25
ZNN has reached out to Disney Animation for a comment, but has not recived a response at this time.
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