Buzz Lightyear by Pixar participates in the 99th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Nov.27, 2025. With Disney's new Sora deal, you can make a video version go at least as far as infinity. Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Macy's, Inc. Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Can something be expected but huge? That's what Disney's OpenAI deal is: the most inevitable bombshell around, but still a bombshell. On Thursday the country's biggest legacy entertainment company announced that it would be partnering with OpenAI to allow its characters to be toyed with in AI. Starting in the next few months, you'll be able to play with Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars characters using Sora on Disney+, or on OpenAI's own platforms. You want to crouch at a race starting-line next to a character from Cars, as a Disney sample showed? Your moment is here. Related Stories Business What Happens to Warner Bros. Games Under Netflix? Business The Future of Hollywood Is Arriving Faster Than Ever The inevitable part is that Disney CEO Bob Iger hinted several weeks ago something like this was coming, and most smart money had it involving OpenAI; the kind of social virality Iger suggested fit squarely with what OpenAI has been good at with the likes of Sora and ChatGPT. Still, we didn't know how soon this would happen. And the details weren't known. One big detail: Disney is paying OpenAI $1 billion for an undisclosed stake in the company. Another detail: a lot of Disney characters will be available as part of the licensing component, but not such that you can see their face; the company is choosing to stay far from that SAG-AFTRA minefield (for now). Also, no voices, to avoid a voice-actor legal/ethical situation, though voice-mouth alignment in current models isn't very good or convincing anyway. But that still leaves a gigantic swath - so many animated characters, and presumably plenty of faceless ones like Darth Vader and Iron Man. (There will be content guardrails, Iger says.) We're about to be inundated on Disney+ with everyone making their own content - to type or likely soon speak a character into your own personalized story, the way you used to speak action figures into your own personalized story, except now it instantly becomes a video. Is this the world's coolest Play-Doh or the world's lamest memeslop? Just one of the key questions you're forgiven for asking. Here are a bunch more, with some answers. What's motivating this move? In a word, Netflix. That's true historically - Netflix ran a 10K on streaming before Disney could lace up its sneakers, prompting a mad belated frenzy from the Burbank firm to get its own service up and running more than a decade later, in 2019. Bob Iger doesn't want to see that happen again, so he's getting out front on the next wave of digital entertainment - AI creations - before Netflix can add its own offering. But it's also true literally. Entertainment giants in the AI age will thrive if they excel on two criteria: tech and content. Netflix has the tech - no Hollywood platform has better algorithms, data or personalization engines. And Disney has the content - no Hollywood studio has more beloved characters and properties. What Netflix did earlier in the week was seek to bolster its content - by buying Warner Bros, it will have a library for training and AI character manipulations it couldn't have built in 100 years (technically 102, given the age of WB). And now with the OpenAI deal, Disney is hoping it has the tech. Netflix. It's always Netflix. So how quickly does this thing go from faceless, voiceless characters to Captain America showing up at my holiday dinner table? Iger is smart by keeping it away from the stuff people are most worried about: live actors getting manipulated to oblivion. There's a Guild issue there, but there's also an uncanny-valley issue there - are we really ready for Chris Evans to be walking and talking as we see fit? Animated characters are already stylized, so that valley is a lot shallower. "A Buzz Lightyear custom birthday card for their kid," OpenAI leader Sam Altman said on CNBC Thursday. Which is pretty much the most benign, casualty-lite use case you could devise (unless you're Hallmark) But make no mistake: existing actors moving in lifelike ways (or synthetic actors doing the same) is where this is all going. Disney just needs to start making deals with unions and getting consumers comfortable first. Think of this as designing a car that looks like a carriage. Necessary, but temporary. Teslas will fill the road soon enough. How should we think about OpenAI now? How much time do you have? The most intriguing company in all of tech-dom is also the most frustrating to define. Founded as a do-gooder nonprofit a decade ago this month, morphed into a social-media ChatGPT "It"