NEWS: Disney Sends Cease and Desist To Google Over The Use Of AI

The Disney Company is no stranger to litigation. The legacy company has now accused Google of using AI to engage in copyright infringement.

According to Variety, Disney has sent a cease-and-desist over the alleged infringement that Disney claims has occurred on a “massive scale.”

The alleged infringement is due to Google’s use of AI models and services, which Disney claims is to “commercially exploit and distribute” infringed images and videos. Disney’s cease-and-desist demands that the internet company stop the infringement through its AI systems.

Disney is working with the law firm Jenner & Block, which previously represented the company in the past. The law firm sent a letter to Google’s general counsel that states, “Google is infringing Disney’s copyrights on a massive scale, by copying a large corpus of Disney’s copyrighted works without authorization to train and develop generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’) models and services, and by using AI models and services to commercially exploit and distribute copies of its protected works to consumers in violation of Disney’s copyrights.”

The law firm wrote that Google is a “virtual vending machine, capable of reproducing, rendering, and distributing copies of Disney’s valuable library of copyrighted characters and other works on a mass scale.” They also claim Google’s “blatant infringement” images are branded with Google’s Gemini logo, which leads to “falsely implying that Google’s exploitation of Disney’s intellectual property is authorized and endorsed by Disney.”

The letter continued to state that Google infringed on content from Frozen, The Lion King, Moana, The Little Mermaid, Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy, Toy Story, Brave, Ratatouille, Monsters Inc., Lilo & Stitch, Inside Out, and even the Star Wars franchise. They specifically reference this photo of Darth Vader, which they allege was generated by text prompts using Google’s AI system.

Disney is no stranger to the use and battle over AI. In September 2025, Disney teamed up with Warner Bros., Discovery, and Universal Pictures to sue MiniMax over the use of stolen intellectual property through AI. In a statement to Variety, a Google spokesperson shared, “We have a longstanding and mutually beneficial relationship with Disney, and will continue to engage with them. 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 claims that they have tried to address the issue with Google for months leading up to the cease and desist, but that the issue has grown over that time. In an interview with CNBC, Disney CEO Bob Iger says that the company has been “aggressive” in protecting its intellectual property. He continued to say, “We’ve gone after other companies that have not honored our IP, not respected our IP, not valued it. And this is another example of us doing just that.”

After saying the company did express their concerns to Google, Iger said, “Ultimately, because we didn’t really make any progress, the conversations didn’t bear fruit, we felt we had no choice but to send them a cease-and-desist.” The cease and desist demands that Google stop using Disney’s IP immediately. They continue to say Google must “immediately implement effective technological measures” to prevent further infringement.

The letter to Google continued on saying, “Disney will not tolerate the unauthorized commercial exploitation of its copyrighted characters and works by so-called AI services.” They also allege that Google’s conduct is “particularly harmful” because of how the internet giant is “leveraging its market dominance.”

Disney also pointed to a trend that Google promoted that involved the creation of “figurines” through AI and cited a post by Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on X to support their claim. They allege that Google supplied its own AI promotion that encouraged people to participate. Disney provided examples of their characters being used in the trend, which you can see below.

Disney recently reached an agreement with OpenAI that will bring their popular characters to Sora. The agreement is a three-year licensing agreement that will allow Sora to “generate short, user-prompted social videos” that can be viewed and shared. The agreement will allow Sora to use more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters. It will also allow a selection of these fan-inspired Sora videos to be available to stream on Disney+.

As the popularity of AI continues, we doubt this will be the last legal issue that the entertainment giant sees. Be sure to keep following AllEars for more Disney news and updates.

OpenAI and Disney Reach Deal, Characters to Be Used in AI Content

 

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