Report: Disney Asked Microsoft To Prevent AI Users From Infringing Its Trademarks

Tributes and parodies of Pixar-style characters generated by Microsoft’s Bing AI imaging tool have drawn the attention of The Walt Disney Company’s legal counsel.

The concern stems over a recent social media trend in which people prompted images of pets in a “Pixar” style. The issue though wasn’t the artwork itself, but rather Bing’s generation of a trademark-infringing Disney-Pixar logo.

The Financial Times reported that Disney requested Microsoft to prevent its users from infringing on trademarks. In response, the tech giant blocked the term “Disney” from its image generator, which is powered by DALL-E 3 technology. After tweaks, Microsoft has restored the prompt.

According to the FT report, Microsoft’s AI-generated images are still pumping out a jumbled version of the Disney-Pixar logo, and it remains unclear whether this new version has adequately addressed Disney’s concerns.

Microsoft told FT:

There is a current level of variability that may return different results from time to time as we continue to refine our safety systems . . . Additionally, artists, celebrities, and organizations can request to limit the creation of images associated with their names and brands.

More concerning for Disney is the “Offensive AI Pixar” meme, in which Microsoft Bing users create offensive film ideas in a generic cg style that many people associate with Pixar films. This trend is much more difficult to shut down because it’s a near certainty that Bing Image Creator has already been trained on copyrighted Disney and Pixar artwork. Further complicating the matter, the text and Disney-Pixar logos for this meme are being physically inserted by users after the central image has already been generated.

Offensive Disney and Pixar parodies have always lurked in the corners of the internet, but AI tech has made it so anyone can generate such pieces in mere seconds, no skill required. The proliferation of such material will only grow as AI systems engage in widespread theft of intellectual property belonging to others, and no immediate solution is on the horizon for how Disney (or anyone else) can put a stop to the misuse of their trademarks.