Todd Spangler, reporting last week for Variety:

As Disney has gone into business with OpenAI, the Mouse House is accusing Google of copyright infringement on a “massive scale” using AI models and services to “commercially exploit and distribute” infringing images and videos. On Wednesday evening, attorneys for Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google, demanding that Google stop the alleged infringement in its AI systems. [...]

According to the letter, which Variety has reviewed, Disney alleges that Google’s AI systems and services infringe Disney characters including those from “Frozen,” “The Lion King,” “Moana,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Deadpool,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Toy Story,” “Brave,” “Ratatouille,” “Monsters Inc.,” “Lilo & Stich,” “Inside Out” and franchises such as Star Wars, the Simpsons, and Marvel’s Avengers and Spider-Man. In its letter, Disney included examples of images it claims were generated by text prompts in Google’s AI apps, including of Darth Vader (pictured above).

It’s very Disney-esque to embrace a new medium. Alone among the major movie studios in the 1950s, Disney embraced television. TV was a threat to the cinema, but it was also an enormous opportunity. The other studios only saw the threat. Walt Disney focused on the opportunity. But Disney did this not by giving their content to television on the cheap or for free. They did it by getting paid. That’s what they’re doing with generative AI.

Here’s the Gemini-generated Darth Vader image. Note the blood splatter — which was un-Star Wars-like even before Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm. Also, even worse, his lightsaber is totally wrong.