AI and Disney's sacred IP

Disney is - and always has been - very territorial about their intellectual property.  I mean look at Mickey Mouse, and how the Disney company sought to maintain the copyright over his likeness for as long as they did, going so far as to lobby congress so that they could maintain that copyright for longer than originally intended.

And now along comes AI.  And several companies are using it to generate content that (seemingly obviously) infringe on those copyrights.  Only the courts have been kind of letting a lot of it slide as these new technologies are "training."

But Disney is not taking that lying down and is suing to protect their IP from this type of infringement.  Its worth watching to see how this plays out, and whether the other players with significant works being re-created ultimately join the effort to stop AI companies from using and monetizing on the works of Disney (and others).

Here's an article from June that lays it all out.  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-06-22/inside-disney-s-campaign-to-protect-darth-vader-from-ai