In a landmark move, OpenAI and The Walt Disney Company have struck a three-year licensing and commercial deal that makes Disney the first major content partner for Sora, backed by a $1 billion equity investment and additional warrants. The partnership is presented as a model for how an AI platform and a studio can license high-value IP while keeping creators in the loop and maintaining strict safety and rights controls.
Under the agreement, Sora and ChatGPT Images will be allowed to generate short fan-prompted social videos and images based on more than 200 characters, costumes, and locations from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars, with a curated set of clips set to appear on Disney+. The license excludes actor likenesses and voices, adds age-appropriate access rules, and commits both sides to blocks on harmful or illegal outputs, with first consumer features targeted for early 2026 inside the Sora app, ChatGPT, and Disney+.
Sora 2 sits behind this deal as OpenAI’s flagship text-to-video system, able to turn prompts into more physically consistent clips, now with options for longer 15 to 25-second videos, frame-by-frame storyboards, and fast iteration tools that line up with short-form social formats. Disney will also become a major OpenAI customer, integrating ChatGPT and the Sora and Images APIs into Disney+ and internal tooling, tying one of Hollywood’s largest IP libraries directly to OpenAI’s generative stack while creative workers and rights holders watch how this licensed AI content model plays out in practice.
