Artificial Intelligence: Disney's Breakthrough with OpenAI
THE'artificial intelligence is profoundly transforming the entertainment and media industry. In this scenario, the agreement between Disney and OpenAI represents an ideal case study to understand how companies can shift from a defensive approach to’artificial intelligence to a strategic and business-oriented one.
Disney will invest one billion euros in OpenAI and make its characters available within Sora, the AI system artificial intelligence OpenAI's generative technology produces short videos from simple text input. This isn't just a financial investment, but a technological positioning choice, with direct impacts on content, rights, and new monetization models.
Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property: What the Disney–OpenAI Agreement Covers
Thanks to this agreement, OpenAI will have access not only to classic Disney characters, but to nearly all of the company's major intellectual properties: Marvel superheroes, Pixar film characters, the Star Wars universe, and much more. This is the first time a major global entertainment corporation has decided to directly invest in a company that develops AI models. artificial intelligence generative.
Until now, many Hollywood majors had taken a largely defensive approach: takedown requests, lawsuits, and pressure for stricter regulations on the unauthorized use of their characters online. Disney, however, has chosen to collaborate with OpenAI to try to manage the phenomenon internally, rather than simply combat it externally.
Journalist Eric Vilas-Boas, in Vulture, wrote that Disney found it more convenient to try to "control the future of«artificial intelligence, rather than seeing unauthorized versions of its intellectual property run wild online." In this way, instead of simply issuing continuous takedown notices and engaging in potentially endless lawsuits, the company is building an infrastructure to make the use of its assets traceable and monetizable.
In his newsletter, film producer Evan Shapiro called OpenAI Disney's “slopkeeper”: an entity tasked with selecting, filtering and controlling content generated with the’artificial intelligence, preventing the misuse of IP (Intellectual Property) and transforming generative creativity into a source of data and revenue.
Artificial intelligence, talent protection, and the limits of the agreement
A key aspect of the agreement concerns the management of the rights of actors, voice actors, and screenwriters, a highly sensitive issue following the Hollywood strikes and negotiations with the SAG-AFTRA union. Disney has established that the original voice actors' voices cannot be reproduced, nor can the faces of the actors who play the characters in the films be reproduced.
In practice, the’artificial intelligence OpenAI will be able to use the visual appearance of animated characters and masked ones (like Darth Vader or Iron Man), but it won't be able to faithfully replicate the identities of human talent. This distinction is crucial to avoid conflicts with unions and to preserve the value of human creative work.
Despite these limitations, OpenAI will still have access to a huge amount of characters: the entire Disney animated catalog, the Marvel universe, Pixar and much of the Star Wars saga. This gives Sora a unique narrative and visual heritage, concretely testing the potential of the’artificial intelligence generative applied to video and storytelling.
Some videos generated with Sora will be made available on Disney+, the company's streaming platform. This will allow Disney to field test the response of audiences, especially younger ones, to content created directly from Sora models. artificial intelligence, integrating them into the traditional entertainment offering.
Artificial Intelligence and the Competition Between Disney, Netflix, and Warner Bros.
The deal with OpenAI isn't just a technological move, but also a strategic response to the competitive landscape of global streaming. Steven Zeitchik, a journalist for the Hollywood Reporter, interpreted the deal as a reaction to Netflix's attempted acquisition of Warner Bros., which Paramount is trying to thwart.
Netflix uses advanced systems artificial intelligence for years, both for data analysis and for personalizing recommendations and offers to individual users. This technological advantage has allowed it to optimize retention, increase viewing time, and create highly targeted content based on the audience's real tastes, thanks to sophisticated recommendation algorithms (source).
A potential acquisition of Warner Bros. would give Netflix a very large catalog of content and characters to use to further train its own systems. artificial intelligence, widening the technological gap with its competitors. Disney, on the other hand, already has one of the largest catalogs in the world, but has so far lagged behind other digital-first players in adopting AI solutions.
With the agreement with OpenAI, Disney aims to bridge this gap: it will become a strategic customer of OpenAI, with privileged access to its APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). The APIs allow for the direct integration of OpenAI models. artificial intelligence – such as GPT or Sora – into enterprise systems, enabling new user experiences and new internal workflows for employees.
This includes the use of tools like ChatGPT, one of the world's most popular chatbots, not only as an external interface but also to support internal processes: data analysis, creative support, script generation, assistance to marketing teams, and customer care. This approach is being embraced by many industry firms, such as McKinsey Global Institute, they indicate as a lever for growth and productivity for companies.
Artificial Intelligence and the Timing of Disney's Investment
Another key element of the deal is the financial timing. With this investment, Disney acquired a small stake in OpenAI, equal to 0.02 percent, ahead of the company's planned IPO. At the time of the deal, OpenAI was valued at approximately $500 billion, but its market capitalization could increase significantly after the IPO.
For Disney, therefore, the entry into the capital is not only symbolic: in the future it could generate a direct economic return, in addition to the strategic value in terms of preferential access to technologies. artificial intelligence. In an environment where big tech and major companies are positioning themselves in AI ecosystems, timing becomes an important competitive advantage.
This operation also highlights a paradigm shift: the’artificial intelligence It is no longer a simple operational tool or a legal risk, but a real asset class, with effects on stock value, industrial partnerships and long-term strategies.
Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Marketing and Business
The Disney–OpenAI agreement offers several insights for companies that want to understand how the’artificial intelligence is reshaping digital marketing, customer experience, and business models. Using Sora to generate video content shows how brands can multiply formats and creative assets starting from simple text prompts.
For marketers, this means being able to quickly create personalized trailers, content variations for different audience segments, large-scale A/B testing, and creatives adapted to different channels and markets.’artificial intelligence Generative analytics thus becomes a multiplier of content and insights, especially when integrated with first-party data on user behavior.
Intellectual property and rights management also takes on a new dimension: instead of fighting unauthorized versions circulating online, brands can build controlled environments where users create, customize, and share content in a tracked and potentially profitable way. This is a way to transform the reputational risk of the brand.’artificial intelligence into a community building and monetization opportunity.
For businesses in any sector – not just media and entertainment – this approach translates into concrete strategies:
- Marketing campaign automation based on dynamic AI-generated content.
- One-to-one personalization of communications, creative, and offers.
- New interactive experiences with branded chatbots and virtual assistants, on the channels most used by customers.
In particular, the integration of the’artificial intelligence With messaging platforms like WhatsApp, it opens up advanced scenarios for conversational marketing, response automation, proactive customer care, and real-time assisted selling.
How SendApp Can Help with Artificial Intelligence
Disney's experience shows that the’artificial intelligence It only becomes truly strategic when it's integrated into everyday contact channels with the public. For most companies, one of these channels is WhatsApp, which is increasingly central to relationships with customers, leads, and communities.
SendApp helps businesses bring the’artificial intelligence inside conversations on WhatsApp Business, transforming messaging into an engine for marketing automation, sales and customer support. With SendApp Official You can integrate the official WhatsApp API into your own systems, connecting chatbots, CRMs, ticketing systems, and AI models for intelligent, contextual responses.
For teams handling large volumes of chat, SendApp Agent allows you to distribute conversations between multiple operators, centralize message history and combine automations based on artificial intelligence with human intervention when needed. This results in a seamless customer experience, with reduced response times and quality interactions.
For companies that want to go further, SendApp Cloud enables advanced automation at scale: personalized conversational flows, triggers based on user behavior, integrations with external systems and orchestration of multi-channel campaigns.’artificial intelligence It can suggest responses, classify requests, segment contacts, and power real-time analytics dashboards.
If Disney's move with OpenAI is a sign of how big brands are rethinking their relationship with the’artificial intelligence, For SMEs and companies in all sectors, the best way to start is with the channels where customers are already active. With SendApp, you can design a WhatsApp Business strategy that combines automation, AI, and human interaction, starting with simple use cases and moving on to truly advanced conversational experiences.
To find out how to use the’artificial intelligence in your conversational marketing and customer care processes on WhatsApp, visit the site SendApp and request a dedicated consultation or a free trial of the available solutions.
