Shortly before it announced the pact with OpenAI, Disney sent Google a cease-and-desist demand, alleging the internet giant was engaging in copyright infringement on a “massive scale” using AI models and services to “commercially exploit and distribute” infringing images and videos.

More recently, China’s ByteDance incurred a spate of legal threats from studios including Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros., Sony and Netflix with its Seedance 2.0 AI system.

My guess is the powers that be have thought it through and decided to crack down on generative video as a whole with a lawsuit campaign, new legislation or both. The planned crackdown is severe enough that OpenAI can’t continue offering video services without standing in opposition to the closed door oligarch consensus, so they agreed to cooperate in advance by shutting it down.