Disney+ Will Soon Let Users Make AI Slop with Its Characters

Boy, Disney continues to be the villain. They have proven time and again that, despite their outward appearance of hopeful art for the whole family, the House of Mouse has but one priority and that is making money. Why else would they churn the IP butter (gross, sorry) for constant needless sequels and live-action remakes? Not to mention, instantly kowtow to bad-faith aggressors in the face of free speech. (That they then re-kowtowed when their profits lessened is all the more telling.) At any rate, the newest indication of “Money Over Everything” at Disney comes in the form of allowing Disney+ subscribers to create shortform gen-AI content using all of their most beloved characters.

This displeases me, if you couldn’t tell.

According to The Hollywood Reporter (which we saw via Kotaku), Disney CEO Bob Iger announced the “most significant changes — from a product perspective, from a technology perspective” for Disney+ on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call. Part of what this means is utilizing its relationship with Epic Games to create interactive features to its Disney+ platform.

“The other thing that we’re really excited about, that AI is going to give us the ability to do, is to provide users of Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user-generated content and to consume user generated content — mostly short-form — from others,” said Iger. He later also said Disney had “productive conversations” with unnamed AI companies and that the priority is to “reflect the need to protect the IP.”

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So, the company that literally changed copyright law to keep Mickey Mouse out of the public domain for far longer than any previous fictional character will now let users make their own AI slop using registered trademarked characters. Sort of like the company equivalent to your parents letting you drink underage as long as you do it with them. We can infringe on their copyright to our hearts content as long as we use their platform and they get money out of it.

So get ready for TikTok and Instagram Reels to have an overflow of Lilo & Stitch or Frozen characters doing things nobody cared to see. While it may (and who even knows at this point) put a few extra bucks in the Mouse’s pocket, I can’t imagine the countless humans who put untold hours into making indelible animated characters and beloved films will be super thrilled this is happening. Is this what people want when they make movies? The devaluing of art, even commercial art, through generative AI is a problem I doubt we’ll see the end of any time soon.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.

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