Google accused by Disney of ‘massive’ copyright infringement, Variety reports

Disney (DIS) has sent Google (GOOGL) a cease-and-desist letter, accusing Google of “massive scale” copyright infringement and using AI to “exploit and distribute” its content, Variety’s Todd Spangler reports. “Google is infringing Disney’s copyrights on a massive scale, by copying a large corpus of Disney’s copyrighted works without authorization to train and develop generative artificial intelligence models and services, and by using AI models and services to commercially exploit and distribute copies of its protected works to consumers in violation of Disney’s copyrights,” according to the letter to Google’s general counsel from law firm Jenner & Block on behalf of Disney. The letter continued, “Google operates as a virtual vending machine, capable of reproducing, rendering, and distributing copies of Disney’s valuable library of copyrighted characters and other works on a mass scale. And compounding Google’s blatant infringement, many of the infringing images generated by Google’s AI Services are branded with Google’s Gemini logo, falsely implying that Google’s exploitation of Disney’s intellectual property is authorized and endorsed by Disney.”