Disney wants to drag you into the decline of artificial general intelligence

Disney and OpenAI New $1 billion partnership It is a symbol of the terrible times we live in. In exchange for access to APIs and tools like Generative AI ChatGPTthe studio plans to let users of OpenAI’s Sora AI video generator create clips featuring hundreds of Disney-owned characters. Sora AI users will be able to create as much Pixar/Marvel/Star Wars Stranger Things for themselves as they want, and Disney will share some of it in a special section on the Disney Plus platform. It’s not hard to see where this is going.

Disney CEO Bob Iger Description of the partnership It represents “an important moment for our industry” and said it would give studio customers “richer, more personal ways to connect with the Disney characters and stories they love.” Iger also said the deal aims to “expand our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works.”

This may be how Iger thinks it will end with OpenAI, but when you take an honest look at what Sora AI is and how Disney’s previous experiments with generative AI have ended, it’s clear that this will all end very stupidly.

At its core, this partnership is about OpenAI securing a new influx of capital and Disney exiting with strong support for one of the major AI companies fighting for dominance in the tech sector. The $1 billion pledged by Disney will not completely solve the problem Cash flow problems at OpenAIbut it will make it the first company of its kind to deal with an old entertainment studio of this size. Although Sora is not immediately integrated into the production workflow for Disney projects, it will give the studio a tangible way to signal to the public its interest in using generative AI. On the flip side of things, Disney has access to a large amount of raw content that it can stream without having to pay anyone to produce it.

After months of different studios including Disney files lawsuits against artificial intelligence companies To build models trained on unlicensed IP seems very strange Disney will Pay OpenAI To be used for Disney characters like the Avengers and The Mandalorian. On the face of it, the deal seems clearly lopsided, but the situation is even stranger when you look at it What Sora AI can do.

Although Sora can turn a few sentences of text into glossy video footage, AI-generated clips are always Short, strange, and full of contradictions This makes it unsuitable for use in the types of entertainment that people are usually willing to pay for. That’s why there are so many “movies” and… Ads created using generative AI Looks like absolute garbage. But these limitations are also likely the reason why Disney plans to start focusing on small-scale, user-generated content.

Fans entertaining themselves by exploiting corporate-owned intellectual property with their own unique creations is nothing new, but what’s different is the way Disney wants to capitalize on this behavior. The Sora AI integration will give Disney direct access to a content pipeline that subscribers will pay the studio to use. This system will effectively invite Disney Plus users to become customers and Unpaid employees, a scenario that might seem ideal for Disney’s executive leadership. But the last time Disney gave people the ability to do that Mess with his IP this wayThings developed quickly in the most unexpected way.

While players were unable to do so fortniteThe AI ​​gen’s Darth Vader NPC does what they want, the character could have been persuaded to say hateful, bigoted things in the voice of James Earl Jones with enough prodding. Epic Games has taken some measures to try to preserve it fortniteFailed to behave in inappropriate ways, but – shockingly – players still find workarounds because that’s how people act. The same “let’s do it because we can” energy is what animates a lot of the clips you see on the dedicated social video platform Sora AI, where it’s easy to find footage of characters like Mister Rogers and Bob Ross saying and doing offensive things.

OpenAI likely told Disney leadership that it has put measures in place to prevent people from making characters, for example The Incredibles They shout racist words. But even if the studio revised all of Sora AI’s output involving Disney characters, there would still be an endless stream of content far from the quality the IP’s original creators — skilled human artists — intended.

It’s hard to believe Iger’s assertions that this partnership was made with the goal of respecting and protecting the art and artists who make Disney such a strong company. The company says that the Sora AI will not be allowed to reproduce the voices or likenesses of any of the actors associated with its characters, but that also feels like a sign of how soulless this whole endeavor is. It gives Disney a solid way to ensure they don’t have to repay the performers whose work originally brought these characters to life. It also makes it seem as if Disney thinks people can be entertained simply by showing familiar faces out of context.