Google needs Hollywood more than the studios need AI

Striking deals with studios like Disney could help the tech giant shift the narrative about artificial intelligence.

Striking deals with studios like Disney could help the tech giant shift the narrative about artificial intelligence.

Google has reportedly been reaching out to a number of Hollywood’s biggest studios, hoping to strike licensing agreements that would allow it to train its AI models on copyrighted material in exchange for massive piles of cash. In theory, these deals would be a win-win: a huge financial boon to the studios that would also give Google a significant advantage in its race to outpace other AI companies. But while there’s little downside for Google, these deals pose a distinct set of risks to each of the studios that might be thinking about going all-in on AI. Getting into bed with Google this way might benefit Hollywood in the short term, but it could just as easily backfire and leave the public feeling burned by the entertainment industry.

Though Google has not yet been able to get Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, or Universal to agree to anything officially, the company’s executives have been reaching out to multiple studio representatives with pitches focused on its AI technology, according to unnamed sources speaking to The Los Angeles Times . Google wants permission to train its AI models on the studios’ vast libraries of copyrighted content, and it’s willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get ahold of them. Per The LA Times , Google could pay a studio like Disney / Pixar around $40 million just for the rights to generate outputs featuring a single copyrighted character. That payout could swell well into the billions the more characters Google’s deals encompass, and studios might be able to secure a portion of however much advertising revenue Google makes from AI-generated content featuring that IP on platforms like YouTube.

As expensive as these partnerships would be for Google, they would also be an invaluable tool as the company continues to crystalize its position as one of the most prominent players in the AI game. Gemini being able to spit out Disney-approved images of Darth Vader and Snow White might not seem all that significant on its face, but that’s exactly the sort of thing that could get more ordinary, non tech-obsessed people seeing generative AI in a more positive (if innocuous) light. After years of hearing AI companies boast about their plans to disrupt society and eliminate jobs, public sentiment — especially among young people — about the technology has shifted into the negative . Even with tools like ChatGPT being as popular as they are, the larger AI industry has been so mired in controversy and plagued by concerns about its real world harms that it would now be hard-pressed to put out products that would immediately curry widespread goodwill.