Google Removes AI Videos of Disney Characters After Cease and Desist Letter

Google has removed dozens of AI-generated videos that depicted Disney-owned characters after receiving a cease and desist letter from the studio on Wednesday.

Disney flagged the YouTube links to the videos in its letter, and demanded that Google remove them immediately. The AI videos included Mickey Mouse, Deadpool and characters from “Star Wars” and “The Simpsons,” many of which were made using Google’s AI video tool, Veo.

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The links were still working on Thursday, but now reroute to a message that reads, “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Disney.”

Disney launched the broadside shortly before announcing a deal to license 200 characters to OpenAI, which will allow Sora users to create short AI clips.

The company has sought to draw a line in the sand to protect its characters from unlicensed AI use. In the cease and desist letter, Disney also provided a long list of characters it wants removed from YouTube and YouTube Shorts, including those from “Frozen,” “Moana,” “Toy Story,” “Deadpool,” “Iron Man,” “Lilo & Stitch,” and “Winnie the Pooh.”

In a statement on Thursday, Google said it would work with Disney on the issue.

“We have a longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship with Disney, and will continue to engage with them,” the company said. “More generally, we use public data from the open web to build our AI and have built additional innovative copyright controls like Google-extended and Content ID for YouTube, which give sites and copyright holders control over their content.”

Disney also demanded that Google implement safeguards to prevent its AI tools from generating Disney-owned characters. It also demanded that Google cease using Disney’s characters to train its AI models.