On Wednesday, May 7th, 2025, the Walt Disney Co. sign was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, New York.
Michael Nuggle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Walt Disney Company Last week, I sent a stop and destination letter to carchere.ai, warning me to stop using copyrighted characters to launch artificial intelligence.
A Character.ai spokesperson removed the characters mentioned in the letter, saying, “It’s always going to the right shoulder that people decide how to interact with their IP.”
The spokesman acknowledged that while some characters on that platform are completely original works, others are “inspired by existing characters that people love.”
“We want to partner with the industry and the right-wingers so that they can bring their characters to the platform,” a spokesperson for Charitious.ai told CNBC. “Our goal is to create control, engaging, revenue-generating experiences for IP owners from deep fandom of characters and stories, and expand their reach using new interactive formats.”
The letter serves as the latest example of how media companies like Disney are working to protect their intellectual property during the AI boom.
Disney has already been involved in an ongoing lawsuit against AI image creator Midi Joanie, claiming it was inappropriately used and distributed by AI from films such as “Cars,” “Toy Story,” “Shrek,” and “The Avengers.”
Axios first reported a halt and obsolete letter.
Character.ai allows users to create and interact with character-based chatbots. Google signed a $2.7 billion employment and employment licensing agreement with Charitious.AI in 2024, and the startup was caught in an illegal death lawsuit in the same year.
The family of Sewell Setzer III, a 14-year-old Florida boy, claimed he committed suicide after becoming obsessed with talking to many AI chatbots on the app. According to the lawsuit, one of the chatbots was named Daenerys Targaryen, or Dany, a character from the show “Game of Thrones.”
It’s not just AI companies that are facing scrutiny about their approach to IP.
Earlier this month, a federal judge pre-approved a humanity proposal to pay $1.5 billion to resolve a class action lawsuit with a group of authors who allegedly downloaded books and other items from a pirated database.
If you have a suicide idea or are suffering, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for assistance and support from a trained counselor.
Watch: Disney is likely to spinoff ESPN and ABC Post Iger, says Lightshed’s rich Greenfield
