OpenAI shuts down its AI video tool Sora as Disney pulls a planned $1 billion investment and ends its licensing partnership, a major blow amid escalating Hollywood copyright battles targeting AI video platforms including Midjourney, Minimax, and ByteDance's Seedance 2.0.
Disney cancels its $1 billion OpenAI licensing deal after Sora's shutdown, though no money ever changed hands, and both companies are still exploring alternative partnership opportunities even as Hollywood's AI concerns shift toward rival platforms like SeeDance 2.0.
OpenAI shuts down its Sora video app and ends its $1 billion Disney deal, as Elon Musk's xAI races to capture the AI video market with Grok Imagine — but faces lawsuits, EU probes, and fierce competition from Google, Runway, and ByteDance.
OpenAI surpasses $120 billion in total funding, blowing past its $100 billion target with backers like Microsoft and Andreessen Horowitz, as the AI giant eyes a potential IPO and makes tough cuts — including shutting down its Sora video app — to prioritize profitability.
OpenAI shuts down its Sora AI video app just months after launch as Disney pulls a $1 billion investment deal, handing Google a major advantage in the rapidly evolving AI video generation market.
ByteDance halts the global launch of its AI video tool Seedance 2.0 after Hollywood studios, including Disney, fire off cease-and-desist letters over viral AI-generated clips depicting celebrities like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, forcing the TikTok parent company to overhaul its intellectual property safeguards before proceeding.
Netflix acquires Ben Affleck's AI filmmaking startup InterPositive for up to $600 million, with the final price dependent on performance targets being met.
Nielsen's Gracenote is suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, claiming the AI giant scraped its human-curated entertainment metadata without permission to train models like ChatGPT, despite repeated ignored licensing attempts.
Game developer adoption of generative AI tools drops to 29 percent in early 2026, down from 36 percent last year, as nearly half of developers fear the technology will lower game quality and cost-saving optimism continues to fade.
Google's NotebookLM launches Cinematic Video Overviews today, using Gemini, Nano Banana Pro, and Veo 3 AI models to generate immersive, personalized videos from user content, available exclusively to Google AI Ultra subscribers aged 18 and older.