If you think about Disney, after you remember the characters and some of the stories, you might think about how much control of the characters Disney has and does maintain its control. Disney has some of the best copyright lawyers and have very active files. But times are a changing.

In an article by Brooks Barnes and Cade Metz of the New York Times News Service, Disney is buying a $1 billion stake in OpenAI and rings its characters to Sora, the AI’s short-form video platform.

The 3-year deal will allow a curated selection of videos made with Sora to stream on Disney+. Disney said it would work with OpenAI to build new products, tools and experiences as part of the agreement and integrate ChatGPT into its workflow.

Disney is the first major Hollywood company to cross this particular Rubicon. Disney, Universal Corp, Warner Bros Discovery and the like have sent the past couple of years trying to sort through major concerns about how generative AI software is build, how copyright holders are compensated and how Hollywood unions may react.

Disney President Bob Iger said let us be mindful of the fact that these are 30-second videos.

Sora was introduced in February 2024, Sora is a technology that lets people generate photorealistic videos simply by typing a sentence into a box on a computer screen. In the fall of 2025, released for social media. More than 1 million downloaded it within 5 days.

One of many things that Sora can do is Sora users could make videos of themselves in a lightsaber battle with Luke Skywalker or a happy birthday video using Buzz Lightyear.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the largest theme park of Disney is Walt Disney World Resort in Florida is situated that way because the founder of Disney, Walt Disney did not have control of Disneyland in California and wanted to control the entire guest experience at the theme park. The history of Disney is ensuring the broad appeal of Disney characters and behind the scenes the Disney Corp controlling what the public sees about their characters. Technology changes operations and companies have to change in order to stay in business. It is hard to change, but it is necessary and once they do change people sees the gravity of the changes. Will the company continue to make profits with the change, it makes investing interesting.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.