2025-12-12

What Disney × OpenAI Teaches Us: Why Only 'Storytellers' Will Remain in the End

1. First, let's organize what happened.

In December 2025, Disney and OpenAI announced a major agreement.

• Disney will invest $1 billion

• A 3-year licensing agreement

• Making over
  200 Disney/Pixar/Marvel/Star Wars characters officially available for use on Sora and ChatGPT
  

• Some fan-made Sora short videos will be
  officially distributed on Disney+

• Internally, Disney will use ChatGPT and APIs to
  create business tools and new features for Disney+

To put it simply,

That is what happened.

At the same time, Disney is legally attacking Google and other AI companies, saying, 'Do not use Disney works for training without permission.'

In other words, their stance is this:

• Unauthorized use: Sue them

• Partners who pay properly and follow the rules: Work together

This 'differentiation' is likely to become the standard for future IP business, which is the starting point of this discussion.

2. The sense of discomfort regarding "professionals regulating AI"

First, the most obvious example is the world of voice actors.

"Do not train or use my voice without permission"
→ As a person and as a professional, this is only natural.

However, the technology side is moving like this: high-quality TTS and voice cloning are already being released by multiple companies, and they speak with quite natural emotional expression even in Japanese.

To be honest,

.

When that happens, the work of voice actors will gradually change like this.

• Instead of being someone who "reads" text,

• they will move closer to being a
  director who determines the performance / supervisor of the worldview to match the work or character.

You can temporarily protect jobs through rights. But fundamentally,

cannot be stopped.

3. It's not just voice actors: the entire film industry will be "reorganized"

The same thing will happen to other professions.

Actors

• Faces and bodies can be quite accurately reproduced with CG, deepfakes, and digital doubles.

• When combined with AI,

  • de-aging

  • recreating the deceased

  • and fictional actors
    will become commonplace.

The value that remains is

• that person's own life, statements, and way of living = drama as a human being

• Live events, social media, etc.,
  the fan psychology of 'wanting to be connected to a living, breathing person'

will become the norm.

Film Directors / Animation Directors

• Location scouting, storyboards, rough edits, VFX drafts...
  AI will increasingly take over these areas.

• A director's job

  • What kind of world to depict?

  • What kind of contradictions and conflicts to include?

  • Where to land in the end?
    —is shifting toward becoming a 'decision-maker' who determines these things.

Screenwriters / Story Writers

• If it's just 'a reasonably interesting single episode,'
  AI can come up with as many ideas as you want.

• But,

  • the rules of the entire world,

  • the thematic nature of the series,

  • and character consistency—designing these is ultimately a human job.
    

We see the same composition here as well.

That is what it is.

4. Movie Theaters, Streaming, and AI Shorts: A Three-Way Battle

From here on, we're talking about 'where and how video is consumed.'

① Movie Theaters

• If it's just a two-hour video, it can be replaced by home + headset + AI generation.

• If movie theaters are to survive,

  • live viewings

  • 4D, cheering screenings, and concert-style screenings

  • the synchronized experience of 'being there together with everyone'

Entertainment as a venue will become the focus.

② Streaming (Disney+, etc.)

In this deal,

• in addition to professional works produced by Disney,

• some short videos created by fans using Sora will be
  distributed on Disney+

is the envisioned format.

In other words,

• Netflix-style 'professional long-form works' and

• YouTube-style 'user-generated shorts'

will begin to mix within the same platform.

③ AI Short Video Platform

Once tools like Sora become commonplace,

• a single creator will be able to mass-produce short films every day
  

• around the world, 'moderately interesting videos' will continue to increase infinitely
  

However, human time will not increase.

This is where the following will matter:

• Who made it (brand)

• Which series/worldview it belongs to (story label)

• What kind of theme the story has (recommendation)

is.

5. The Rules of the IP Business Are Being Rewritten

Conventional Wisdom

• IP is "something to be protected"

• If used without permission, legal will jump in immediately

• Sell licenses at a high price and limit who can use them

This was the correct approach in an era when the number of content pieces was small and
broadcast slots were limited.

The Future Reality

• Countless characters and works are born every day around the world

• Anyone can create "something that looks like a character" with AI

• The supply of content will be completely saturated

In this environment,

—a cruel reality emerges.

The Answer Disney Chose

Disney is doing two things simultaneously here.

1. Against unauthorized training and unauthorized use,
   they are fighting strongly in court against Google and other companies.

2. However, with OpenAI, they are

   • limiting the scope of the license,

   • setting rules for usage,

   • and on the condition that they
     will not be used for training, opening them up significantly.

In other words,

That is the judgment.

The idea of turning IP not into a
"castle just for protection" but into a "theme park where everyone comes to play."

This partnership is the first step toward that.

6. Deconstructing Character IP

"Characters without stories" and "characters with stories"

Here, let's roughly divide character IP into two types.

1. Characters without stories

   • Yuru-chara (mascots)

   • One-off collaboration mascots

   • "Created just because it's cute" types

2. Characters with stories

   • Protagonists of Disney works

   • Characters from long-running manga and anime series

   • Characters told in conjunction with a worldview

The limitations of characters without stories

Famous mascots that have been around for a long time have a brand built on the history of "having been there for years."

However, launching a new "character that is just cute" from scratch
is nearly impossible.

• You can create any number of similar characters with AI

• The only points of differentiation are "color" and "facial features"

• Since there is no story or worldview, it is difficult to expand into education, games, or narratives
  

In the end, it comes down to this.

The strength of characters with stories

Disney-style characters are,

• Background

• Personality and habits

• Likes and dislikes

• Relationships with family and friends

• Interaction with the rules of the world

are already determined as a story.

Thanks to this, it is incredibly easy to expand upon.

• An app for practicing English conversation with Mickey

• A bot for improving sleep with Baymax

• A program for learning 'emotional control' with Elsa

• A healthcare service for building exercise habits with Stitch

and so on, can be naturally integrated into education, healthcare, self-improvement, and learning.

7. Disney × OpenAI is an experiment in opening up a 'Story OS'

This partnership is not just about 'being able to use characters.'

To put it a bit more bluntly,

.

Specifically,

• allowing general users to generate short videos featuring moving Disney characters on Sora
  

• You can create images and interactive experiences
  using Disney characters on ChatGPT

• Some of these will even be officially featured on Disney+.

This is, in terms of YouTube,

• the relationship between the main channel (official videos) and

• clips and secondary creators (fan videos),

done at the Disney scale.

The benefits for the IP holder are simple.

• Fans will think of "promotion" and "new ways to play" on their own.

• You can pick what goes viral and incorporate it officially.

• Depending on the design of usage terms and licensing fees, you can create a
  "the more it's used, the more profitable it becomes" structure.

8. The conclusion that runs through everything:

What remains at the end is the "power to create stories."

To summarize the movements we have seen so far in one phrase:

• Voice actors: The job of just reading will be taken by AI → The job becomes how to direct characters and worlds.
  

• Actors: Faces and movements will get closer via CG → People whose lives themselves are seen as stories will remain.
  

• Directors/Screenwriters: Rather than a single script, those who think about world-building and series composition will have more value.

• Streaming: Chosen not just for the video, but for "which story line it is."

• Character IP: It's not about cuteness, but "what kind of world they are in and what they choose" that determines success or failure.

In other words,

The power to create stories is what sits on top of everything else.

9. How individual creators can survive

The concept of a "Micro-Disney"

There is no point in looking at the world of major IPs, so
I will narrow this down to the individual level from here.

The strategy is simple:

.

Step 1: Decide on the "world" first

• Setting (what kind of city, what era)

• Technological level (how far have AI and robots advanced)

• Social themes (inequality, climate, loneliness, education...)

• The common worries and conflicts of the people living there

If you decide on these first,

• short stories

• web manga

• Sora videos

• T-shirts and merchandise

• audio works

and so on, it becomes easier to expand into any medium.

Instead of "thinking from scratch every time," it is important to
build up different episodes within the same world.

Step 2: Design it from the start with the premise that it will be used by others

It doesn't have to be as strict as Disney, but
prepare a rough set of guidelines.

• No adult content

• No discrimination or hate speech

• No political use

• Everything else is
  fine for derivative works as long as you include credit

By doing this,

• Derivative works are more likely to be created at an early stage

• Fan ideas become 'test marketing'

• The main story can re-import what goes viral

Instead of 'protecting' your IP,

Step 3: Choose a sustainable format

Finally, the most realistic point.

• No matter how correct the theory is,

• if the story 'ends with one work,' it won't become an IP.

You can use the help of AI, so try:

• One short story per week

• One longer episode per month

• A substantial volume on a quarterly basis

It is important to decide on a
pace you can comfortably maintain for 10 years that fits your own life.

10. Viewing Disney × OpenAI as a "Goal Model"

Finally, let's summarize this partnership once more.

• Disney chose not to just protect its IP, but to
  officially throw it into an AI sandbox

• OpenAI chose not to use content without permission, but to
  properly secure licenses to expand its content

• Users can
  run their own stories within the world of Disney's narratives

This structure, when scaled down,
can also be applied to individuals.

• Create your own narrative world

• Use AI to lower the costs of expression and multilingual expansion to the absolute limit

• Expand the world together with the people who use it

In other words,

Before worrying about how to use tools, decide
what kind of story you want to run.

As long as that story exists,
no matter how much AI evolves,
the value of the "storyteller" will not disappear.

In fact, it will accelerate.

And I believe this deal is a sign that
that future has finally begun to move
as a "real business."