On December 11, 2025, The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI announced their $1 billion deal with each other. It’s a three-year licensing deal that will have Sora, an advanced AI video creation that creates high quality-genurated generate user-generated content using 200 characters across Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. These user-generated AI videos will appear on their streaming service, Disney+. They also stated that OpenAI will be used for new products, tools, and eperiences deploying ChatGPT for its employees.
This announcement backfired, with tons of people on the internet sharing their negative thoughts on this deal. Many agreed that they do not want Disney to involve “AI slop” in their streaming service, and that this might be the end of human-made animation.
In an interview with Theater major Alora Rivera, she expressed her feelings about the deal. She said she strongly dislikes it. She believes they are partnering together so they can’t get sued for users’ use of their copyrighted characters. She also says that people who support AI are going to attempt to push back animators, since AI is cheaper, despite it being bad for the environment, since it takes an exorbitant amount of water to cool from processing systems. But she believes real animators will find a place, and human-made art won’t be diminished. Even with this terrible deal, she thinks Disney’s reputation won’t die because of its iconic properties like movies, characters, etc., and that the general public will like be super against Disney for this.
To answer the question if this deal with OpenAI will kill human-made animation, we don’t know the answer, but the popular opinion is that this AI deal won’t kill animation; for now, people will choose human-made content over something made by an AI. Given Bob Iger step down as CEO this year, and the Vice President of the Disney Theme Parks, Josh D’Amaro, is replacing Iger as CEO this March, this deal could be gone or cut down for a lower time. For now, share your voice and tell big companies that we don’t want this.
If you want a more in-depth explanation, check out this video from Vailskibum on YouTube about the topic.
