Screenshots of AI-generated videos on Sora
On Thursday, Disney announced a landmark partnership with OpenAI to license its iconic characters and assets to create clips on OpenAI’s video generating app Sora starting in 2026.
This is the first major licensing deal between OpenAI and a major Hollywood studio, and will include over 200 Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar characters. But as consequential as it is, it’s just putting a rubber stamp on what’s already happening on the app.
Since its launch, Sora users have been happily churning out absurd and dark short-form clips that spoof Disney’s intellectual property – particularly those created by its animation studio Pixar, emulating their recognizable aesthetic and often prominently emblazoning Disney and Pixar’s logos.
This doesn’t bode well for how fans will use the collaboration once it goes online. One of Sora’s most popular trends is creating Disney-style trailers based on extremely dark humor.
A video shows a Pixar-based version of the 2008 Holocaust film “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”, in which Pixar’s Hitler sends the young heroes to the gas chamber. Or if your bad inclinations lean toward current events, how about a Pixar-style story about Jeffrey Epstein Inviting the kids to your “wonderful” islandOr the opposite: a fun adventure movie in which kids try to escape Epstein’s lair, Or an anthropomorphic folder called the “Epstein Files” being buried alive, maybe we should just have Epstein will be the main character,
Other originals include the trailer for “Towers,” a montage of a young man’s journey to becoming a pilot and – you guessed it – flying his plane into a pair of skyscrapers, which is just one example of a popular subgenre of Sora videos in which Pixar-style characters carry out the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Many are blatantly racist, propagating stereotypes targeting Indians and black people. Cruel jokes about people with Down syndrome also abound.
And to be clear, we’re only scratching the surface. there is Complete Compilation sora “disney” trailer is already therePlus there’s its own little ecosystem of reaction YouTubers screaming about the Pixar-style depiction of child labor or calling George Floyd’s death a punchline.
This trend should raise questions about Disney’s decision to associate its family-friendly brand so closely with an app that largely seems to be a factory for nothing but offensive jokes, with blatant disregard for even copyright law. This is especially strange since Disney is apparently cautious about other aspects of the deal: both companies insisted that the actors’ faces and voices would not be part of the licensing agreement, which is almost certainly due to the severe copyrights involved.
And now that Disney is officially licensing its IP to OpenAI, it’s quite possible that the flood of Disney-fied AI slop could get even worse. How will Disney and OpenAI control the use of Disney’s IP, when OpenAI has clearly failed to ban existing Disney content? This is perhaps an extra pressing question since Disney says its fans will be treated to a “curated selection” of Sora videos on its streaming service Disney+.
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