Disney strikes licensing deal with OpenAI, agrees to $US1b investment

Creative industries from film to music and books have struggled to balance protecting their valuable copyright with the powerful new technologies that have taken off with consumers and offer a potential new avenue for growth. Media businesses that own copyrights say the companies building those models should pay them in order to train on their work. The major record labels sued two audio AI startups last year, though Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group both settled recently with Udio, and struck deals to collaborate on a new commercial music creation and streaming service.

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OpenAI unveiled a new version of Sora in September as a standalone social app, available by invitation. As with the original Sora, released last December, users can generate short clips in response to text prompts, but the new app allows people to see videos created by others. Beyond that, users can create a realistic-looking AI avatar and voice of themselves, which can be inserted into videos made with the app by the user or their friends, with the avatar owner’s permission.

“Disney is the global gold standard for storytelling, and we’re excited to partner to allow Sora and ChatGPT Images to expand the way people create and experience great content,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

OpenAI has raised tens of billions of dollars to help cover the cost of talent, chips and data centres needed to build and support cutting-edge AI models. The company was valued at $US500 billion in a secondary share sale completed earlier this year.