The Walt Disney Company has signed a three-year licensing agreement with OpenAI that will bring Disney characters and imagery to Sora, OpenAI’s short-form video generator. Properties included in the deal number more than 200 and span Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars — Zootopia is among them.
Under the agreement Disney will invest $1 billion into OpenAI and become a major customer of the company. The licensing arrangement lets users create and share short videos using the authorized character assets; it explicitly excludes the use of talent likenesses or voices.
Both companies said they are committed to protecting creators’ rights and will implement robust controls intended to prevent the generation of illegal or harmful content. Despite those assurances, the nonprofit advocacy group Fairplay criticized the deal, saying it “betrays kids” and accusing Disney of helping OpenAI attract younger users even though children are reportedly prohibited from using Sora.
Disney character assets will be made available to Sora users beginning in 2026. The partnership marks a significant commercial tie between the media giant and the AI developer and is intended to expand creative tools for users while maintaining guardrails around how licensed characters and content are used.