It's no accident the company picked a partner it could control. This morning Disney and OpenAI announced a three-year licensing agreement: Starting in 2026, ChatGPT and Sora can generate images and videos incorporating Disney IP, including more than 200 characters from the company's stable of Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel brands. To say these companies make for strange bedfellows is an understatement. Before OpenAI released Sora, the company reportedly notified studios and talent agencies they would need to opt out of having their work appear in the new app. The law effectively froze the advancement of the public domain in the United States, with Disney being the greatest beneficiary. On the face of it, it's unclear OpenAI is getting much value out of the deal.

OpenAI releases GPT-5.2 to take on Google and Anthropic The new model is all about professional work. OpenAI's code red response to Google's Gemini 3 Pro has arrived . On the same day the company announced a Sora licensing pact with Disney, it took the wraps off GPT-5.2 . OpenAI is touting the new model as its best yet for real-world, professional use. "It's better at creating spreadsheets, building presentations, writing code, perceiving images, understanding long contexts, using tools, and handling complex, multi-step projects," said OpenAI.

Lawsuit accuses ChatGPT of reinforcing delusions that led to a woman's death Stein-Erik Soelberg killed his mother and took his own life back in August. OpenAI has been hit with a wrongful death lawsuit after a man back in August, . The suit names CEO Sam Altman and accuses ChatGPT of putting a target on the back of victim Suzanne Adams, an 83-year-old woman who was killed in her home. The victim's estate, 56-year-old Stein-Erik Soelberg, engaged in delusion-soaked conversations with ChatGPT in which the bot validated and magnified certain paranoid beliefs. The suit goes on to suggest that the chatbot eagerly accepted delusional thoughts leading up to the murder and egged him on every step of the way.

The ChatGPT-maker is releasing its "best model yet" as it faces new pressures from Google and other AI competitors. OpenAI has introduced GPT-5.2, its smartest artificial intelligence model yet, with performance gains across writing, coding, and reasoning benchmarks. The launch comes just days after CEO Sam Altman internally declared a "code red," a company-wide push to improve ChatGPT amid intense competition from rivals. "We announced this code red to really signal to the company that we want to marshall resources in one particular area, and that's a way to really define priorities," said OpenAI's CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, in a briefing with reporters on Thursday. "We have had an increase in resources focused on ChatGPT in general."

Disney and OpenAI have made a surprise deal - what happens next? Disney's famous Mickey Mouse character will soon be available for use in AI-generated videos The world's best-known AI company and the world's best-known entertainment firm have come to a surprise agreement to allow AI versions of some of the most iconic characters in film, TV and cartoons to be used in generative AI videos and images. Social media is dead - here's what comes next The Walt Disney Company has signed a deal with OpenAI that will allow the AI firm's Sora video generation tool and ChatGPT image creator to use more than 200 of Disney's most iconic characters. Meanwhile, Disney remains in dispute with another AI firm, Midjourney, over alleged infringement of their intellectual property (IP), claiming Midjourney aims to "blatantly incorporate and copy Disney's and Universal's famous characters" into their image generating tool. The characters now deemed fair game for OpenAI users include the likes of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Simba and Mufasa from and Moana, as well as Marvel and Lucasfilm characters, including some of's most well-known names.

Disney is hedging against the future. OpenAI is clearing a path for Sora. And together they've made a blueprint for how AI and Hollywood can move forward. On Thursday, Disney and OpenAI announced a deal that might have seemed unthinkable not so long ago. Starting next year, OpenAI will be able to use Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Ariel, and Yoda in its Sora video-generation model .

A cease-and-desist letter accuses the search giant's AI tools of training on and copying protected works. The letter includes examples of images from several Disney properties including Deadpool, Moana, Star Wars and others, reproduced by Google's AI tools. Disney is demanding that Google implement guardrails within all its AI products to prevent further infringement. Today Disney with OpenAI to license its characters for use in Sora, OpenAI's video generator. The deal will see Disney invest $1 billion in OpenAI (a paltry sum by), with the option to purchase additional equity at a later date.

Disney has agreed to invest $1bn (£740m) in OpenAI as part of a deal which will let people use many of its iconic characters in the chatbot ChatGPT and video-generation tool Sora. It is the first major studio to license parts of its catalogue to the tech giant, in a move which could have major implications for the studio's future plans. It means fans will be able to generate and share pictures and videos of more than 200 characters from Disney's franchises, including Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars. The move comes as OpenAI faces mounting questions about how its rapidly advancing tech is used - and as anxiety in Hollywood increases over the impact of AI on the creative industries. According to a blog post announcing the news, the list of eligible characters include those from Disney films Zootopia, Moana and Encanto - as well as characters like Star Wars' Luke Skywalker and Marvel's Deadpool.

GPU prices could follow RAM's big rise It looks like Disney wasted no time delivering on CEO Bob Iger's promise to bring AI-generated content to Disney+. On Thursday, the company announced the start of a three-year licensing agreement with OpenAI to bring more than 200 of its beloved characters, including those from Star Wars and Pixar, to the Sora app and ChatGPT. With the deal in place, OpenAI users will be able to prompt ChatGPT to generate images that tap into Disney's intellectual property, with costumes, props, vehicles and environments covered. The agreement does not include voices or "talent likenesses," meaning Sora users won't be able prompt the app to make a video with Black Widow and get something with Scarlett Johansson in it. Instead, both Sora and ChatGPT will only have access to animated and illustrated versions of Marvel and Star Wars characters like Black Panther, Captain America, Han Solo, Darth Vader and others.

Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse floats at the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, on 3 April 2025. Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse floats at the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, on 3 April 2025. Walt Disney has announced a $1bn equity investment in OpenAI, enabling the AI start-up's Sora video generation tool to use its characters. Users of Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that draw on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters as part of a three-year licensing agreement between OpenAI and the entertainment giant. A selection of the videos made by users will also be available for streaming on the Disney+ platform. Bob Iger, Disney's CEO, hailed a deal which paired his firm's "iconic stories and characters" with OpenAI's AI technology.