{"id":55432,"date":"2025-10-01T17:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/55432\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T17:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:44:11","slug":"disney-sends-cease-and-desist-letter-to-character-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/55432\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter to Character.AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDisney<\/a>\u2018s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to Character.AI<\/a> demanding the AI chatbot company remove numerous characters owned by the Mouse House \u2014 and accusing the startup of \u201cblatantly infringing\u201d Disney\u2019s copyrights.<\/p>\n

\n\tCharacter.AI said it responded to Disney\u2019s legal threat by removing the characters cited in the letter.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt has come to Disney\u2019s attention that Character Technologies, Inc. (\u2018Character.ai\u2019) has been using Disney\u2019s copyrighted characters as interactive chatbots in its commercial Character.ai service without authorization,\u201d a Disney lawyer wrote in the letter, a copy of which Variety has viewed. \u201cApparently trained without authorization on Disney\u2019s copyrighted works, the Character.ai service features countless chatbots that exploit Disney\u2019s copyrighted works and trademarks, presenting immersive versions of Disney\u2019s famous and beloved characters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe letter continued: \u201cThese actions mislead and confuse consumers, including vulnerable young people, to believe that they are interacting with Disney\u2019s characters, and to falsely believe that Disney has licensed these characters to, and endorsed their use by, Character.ai. In fact, Character.ai is freeriding off the goodwill of Disney\u2019s famous marks and brands, and blatantly infringing Disney\u2019s copyrights. Even worse, Character.ai\u2019s infringing chatbots are known, in some cases, to be sexually exploitive and otherwise harmful and dangerous to children, offending Disney\u2019s consumers and extraordinarily damaging Disney\u2019s reputation and goodwill.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDisney will not allow your company to hijack its characters, damage its brands, or infringe its copyrights and\/or trademarks. Character.ai\u2019s conduct is egregious and must stop immediately,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Disney-owned characters mentioned in the letter as existing on Charater.AI\u2019s platform included Anna and Elsa from the \u201cFrozen\u201d movies, Moana, The Simpsons, Buzz Lightyear and Woody from \u201cToy Story,\u201d Marvel\u2019s Spider-Man, Deadpool and Iron Man, and the Star Wars franchise\u2019s Darth Vader, Yoda, The Mandalorian and C-3PO. Others included Captain America, Peter Parker, Padme Amidala, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff, Luke Skywalker and Logan Howlett.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Variety, a rep for Character.AI said it removed the Disney characters cited in the letter.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll of the Characters on our service are generated by users \u2014 it\u2019s an incredible outpouring of creativity,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cSome of those characters are original creations, and some are inspired by existing characters that people love. It\u2019s like fan fiction, but in an interactive form. However, it\u2019s always up to rightsholders to decide how people may interact with their IP, and we respond swiftly to requests to remove content that rightsholders report to us. The takedown you\u2019re referring to was in response to such a request. These characters have been removed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Character.AI spokesperson added, \u201cWe want to partner with the industry and rightsholders to empower them to bring their characters to our platform. Our goal is to give IP owners the tools to create controlled, engaging and revenue-generating experiences from deep fandom for their characters and stories, expanding their reach using our new, interactive format.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe letter was sent Sept. 18 to Character.AI by Disney\u2019s attorneys at Jenner & Block. News of the cease-and-desist letter was previously reported by Axios<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, Disney has pursued lawsuits against AI companies that it alleges had infringed its copyrights. Disney, together with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery, has sued Midjourney<\/a> and Chinese AI company MiniMax<\/a>, seeking to recover monetary damages and injunctions to block the alleged infringement.<\/p>\n

\n\tCharacter.AI launched its service in late 2021. In 2023, it raised $150 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, which valued the company at around $1 billion. Last year, Google entered into a $2.7 billion licensing deal with Character.AI and hired CEO and co-founder Noam Shazeer (and former Google engineer), per a Wall Street Journal report<\/a>. Shazeer is currently VP of engineering and co-lead of Google\u2019s Gemini AI division.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Menlo Park, California-based company describes its platform like this: \u201cCharacter.AI leads you to the crossroads where storytelling, gaming, social connection, and creative expression converge to captivate you like never before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Disney\u2018s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to Character.AI demanding the AI chatbot company remove numerous characters owned by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,39291,9618,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-55432","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-character-ai","12":"tag-disney","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}