Google is in secret talks with major Hollywood studios, including Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery, to license popular characters and film archives for integration into its own artificial intelligence tools.
Google is in secret talks with major Hollywood studios, including Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery, to license popular characters and film archives for integration into its own artificial intelligence tools.
However, the deals are being held up by legal hurdles and union resistance, the LA Times reports. No formal agreement has been reached yet. The main obstacles remain concerns among Hollywood talent about copyright and job security, as well as complex data security requirements.
Google is seeking to attract Hollywood to use its technology amid fierce competition in the IT sector, and is tapping entertainment industry experts to build partnerships with media giants.
«For Google’s tools and technologies to become truly usable in large-scale film and television production, their models must be tuned to account for the extremely dynamic content and metadata that only Hollywood studios possess,» said an insider familiar with the details of the meetings.
If successful, character licensing could become a significant source of revenue for studios. Experts estimate that the right to use a single popular character in AI models could cost around $40 million, while packs of dozens of characters are valued in the billions. In addition, Google is working on image recognition technologies on YouTube that will allow it to detect AI-generated content and monetize it for the benefit of rights holders.
Google’s actions are also intended to fill a niche after OpenAI shut down its video generator Sora, which caused its previous deal with Disney to fall through. At the same time, Google is strengthening ties with independent creators: the IT giant invested $75 million in the A24 studio and is also collaborating with director Darren Aronofsky’s company Primordial Soup.
Google’s current approach is significantly different from a decade ago, when the company clashed fiercely with Hollywood over YouTube piracy. Back then, Viacom even sued Google for $1 billion for copyright infringement.
Now, film studios themselves are looking for ways to optimize costs using new technologies. In particular, Netflix acquired AI startup InterPositive for $587 million, and Disney is attracting specialized technology companies to its corporate accelerator.
