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Could Disney's biggest characters be heading to the world of AI?
Can I get a chi-hoo?
No.
I am your father.
To infinity and beyond!
Welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Sam Fenwick.
Disney is investing a billion dollars in open AI, giving the startup access to more than 200 Disney characters.
We'll hear from a Hollywood actor on what it means for performers.
Also today, a Kenyan court freezes a multi-billion dollar US health deal over fears it could expose patient-sensitive medical data.
So Disney is taking a $1 billion stake in OpenAI.
And, in return, the AI company will be able to use more than 200 of Disney's most famous characters in its video generation tool, Sora.
It means some very familiar faces could soon be appearing in AI-made clips.
Can I get a chi-hoo?
No, I am your father.
That's not Blizzard.
That's my sister.
If we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn sure we'll avenge it.
So the three-year deal will let Sora users create videos featuring everyone from Mickey Mouse and Cinderella to Ariel and Simba, although without the actors' original voices.
It's the biggest investment a Hollywood studio has made in AI development.
Let's talk to media lawyer Kelsey Farish.
She advises people in the creative industry on AI in both the US and in Europe.
Kelsey, welcome.
Put this deal in context for us.
A billion dollars, it sounds like a lot of money.
But when we talk about AI at the moment there's billions and billions kind of churning around, isn't there?
That's absolutely right.
And thank you so much for inviting me onto the programme.
I think this is really indicative that this is just the start of what we're going to be seeing down the pipeline.
I think Disney, it's famously litigious.
Lots of lawsuits flying around Disney against other AI companies, to include Midjourney, and They recently sent a cease and desist letter to Google asking them to stop using their IP without permission.
And now they've kind of turned around and said well actually, let's get in front of this and let's properly license our intellectual property.
You know the actors, the characters and so on.
Let's make a bit of money out of it and let's see where this takes us.
They're jumping in with both feet, aren't they?
I mean, a billion dollars, it is a lot of money.
So they're having to diversify.
Well, let's talk to Alicia Cooper now a comedian and actress best known for Oscar winning film Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse.
Alicia, what's your reaction?
Are you worried about AI generated videos, especially for sort of animated films that you've been part of?
Alicia, are you there?
Yes.
Can you?
We have you.
We hear you loud and clear.
I was just asking what you thought of the deal, especially for sort of AI generated videos and animated videos.
Yes.
You know what?
Initially, I was nervous about it because it was such a new situation.
You know, everybody's learning about this AI thing and it sounds so frightening.
But as I started researching it, there's so many things that can be beneficial if you learn things that will work out best for you.
So I had to learn about intellectual property, how to own my name, my image, my likeness.
There's a lot of legal things that will need to take place.
But if you learn this thing and really lean into it, it can actually be a big thing, a good thing for you in the long run.
Do you think it could possibly generate more work for you?
I think it can generate more work because there's things that AI cannot recreate.
They can't recreate humor.
They can't recreate performances.
They can't write like we write.
They have limitations.
You say that, but I wonder, the word yet keeps springing to mind.
You know, they don't have humor yet.
They can't write like humans write yet.
Right.
Well, that's a good point you make, but you're going to need human beings to host these shows.
You're going to need human beings to perform in these movies.
You're going to need things that AI cannot do.
You're still going to need that human connection.
The only problem is that wealthy people are going to stay wealthy and the poorer people are going to be knocked out.
They're not going to need background work anymore, workers anymore, because they'll be able to create their own, generate their own audiences.
So a lot of day work will go up by the wayside.
So the lesser income people are really going to be hit.
So what I would suggest is for lesser income people to find a way to make money in this new AI world.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, it's interesting what you say, that because this AI deal you could see.
You know characters like Woody from Toy Story, but you won't hear Tom Hanks's voice.
And I suppose that that is protected.
But he's quite a big name and the names behind some of these characters in these Disney films are very big names.
But I suppose what you're saying is they might be protected, but you kind of extras might not be.
Exactly.
Tom Hanks will be protected.
He has the lawyers, the money to protect his image, his likeness.
He will be protected.
It's the smaller people that will suffer, unfortunately.
But if you learn how to utilize this, there's ways that you can make money even as a smaller person.
And Bob Iger, the boss of Disney, is saying that this partnership will extend the reach of Disney storytelling while protecting creators.
From what we know, what does that deal mean, meaningfully mean?
What does that protection word actually mean for you?
Well, the protection means you're going to have to get an attorney and protect yourself.
They're never going to look out for you more than they look out for that company.
So you're going to have to protect yourself through legal means and you're going to have to lawyer up.
And that's again where I was saying people who don't have the money or the income they're still going to be taken advantage of.
The people who have the money can make sure legally that they are protected, because you're going to need those legal protections.
Kelsey, the agreement, as we've been saying, excludes actors' voices and likenesses.
Legally, how robust do you think that safeguard is?
Well, I just want to say something.
I've been nodding emphatically in agreement with what Alicia is saying.
And I say this as a lawyer who spent nearly a decade advising tech companies.
And now I work almost exclusively with actors and performers and other creatives.
And I fantasize about a world in which actors don't need to spend their hard-earned money trying to figure out what their contracts say.
I personally believe it's incumbent upon production companies and tech companies to cut out the legal jargon and just say in plain English how they intend to use the likenesses and the performances of talent, because that's so important.
But what you were saying just a moment ago about how robust it is, look the laws around publicity and whether or not an actor's voice is protected at law because it's recognizable, because they're a big name, because they have a, you know, a celebrity status.
It depends jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and the context is really important there.
What i want to see however, is is what i just said is is making it really clear up front to the actors before they agree to work on a project and be told straight up hey we're, We might use your voice or your likeness in future in connection with AI.
Is that cool with you?
If not, let's talk about it.
Let's try to come up with something that works for everyone.
I think we're still a long way away from that.
Is Alicia's outlook on this, she's saying that she's lawyering up, is that unusual?
I think that especially – so I have an American accent.
I'm originally from the US West Coast.
I live now in London.
It's very rare actually for actors to seek out legal advice.
So I spend a lot of time trying to reach out to them through Equity, SAG-AFTRA, et cetera.
It is unfortunately unusual.
But when I represented a UK-based voice actor on becoming the voice of a chatbot on a popular social media platform –.
We were able to secure a really good deal for that individual, but they also had to pay a lot of money for it.
We're all wondering who that is, but I bet you can't tell us, can you?
No, I can't.
They would not be happy with me.
Alicia, just before we go and leave this, looking ahead, you're embracing this.
You think it's a good thing overall, don't you, Alicia?
You know what?
I think it can be a good thing in the long run.
It's just frightening right now because we're so used to being beaten out of things in the entertainment industry that we feel like somehow we're going to get screwed.
But the best thing we can do is educate ourselves as best we can to try to figure out all the possible revenue streams that can come from AI and just lean into it.
Fantastic.
Thank you so much for talking to us.
Alicia Cooper there, Hollywood actress and Kelsey Furish, media lawyers.
Now the official online ballot for tickets to matches to next year's Football World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico opened today, on Thursday.
Fans group...
Football supporters Europe have said that it's astonished by FIFA's exorbitant pricing strategy and called for the tickets sales to be halted immediately.
It's not going to stop England fan Luke Buxton, though.
He is planning to travel to the World Cup next year.
It's absolutely outrageous.
It's just a big betrayal to the most dedicated fans of every nation that's following their side of the World Cup next summer.
I mean, they can talk about market forces, but the sport of football is not meant to be about these market forces.
I don't mind it almost in a sense when it's general sale tickets, but these tickets should go to the supporters associations, which are the fans that have followed the country home and away for the last decade.
Well earlier I spoke to Kieran Maguire, a football finance expert at the University of Liverpool in the northwest of England.
And I asked him to run me through how much the tickets are going to cost.
Well, if you want to see the United States or England, the cheapest tickets for the group games.
So these are sort of the initial phase of matches.
They vary between two hundred and sixty five and seven hundred dollars.
700.
700 for what's referred to as a Category 1 seat.
And you get nothing for that.
There's no prawn sandwiches for free.
They don't get a programme.
That's just for your seat.
There are some cheaper matches.
The cheapest ticket price I've found is is for Paraguay versus European Playoff C.
Okay, we don't know who that is yet, do we?
We don't even know who the opponents are, and that varies between $140 and $450.
But if you're feeling very brave and you want to watch the final of the World Cup, an iconic event.
The cheapest ticket price is £4,185, and the Category 1 ticket is £8,680.
So I'll bring my wife and the kids and the grandkids.
Yeah, you can take the whole family on that, can't you?
Those lower-end price tickets which are still quite expensive.
Do we know how many of those there are?
So are you likely then to actually be able to get one of those tickets?
I think you are.
I mean, what is quite revealing is that when FIFA initially put tickets up for sale, they said that there were going to be four categories.
But category four, which is the cheapest and they were very much coming from, you can get a ticket for as little as 60.
A, those tickets worked out as probably 1% to 2% of the available seating.
And secondly, they disappeared immediately, which...
What FIFA have also done is that they have set up a secondary ticket sale market.
And these prices I've just been quoting to you, they're being multiplied by a huge factor.
And FIFA is taking 30%.
It takes 15% from the buyer and 15% from the seller.
So it's making money from selling tickets and it's making money from other people selling tickets as well.
And how are they justifying the high cost of these tickets?
Well, their argument is that demand is huge and therefore Economics 101 says if you've got huge demand for a product and you've got a limited number of products to sell, you reflect that by the pricing mechanism.
So they will feel vindicated and justified because there is huge interest in this competition.
It is an opportunity for fans to see iconic football teams, iconic football players in amazing stadiums.
And they say, yes, the ticket prices aren't cheap.
But if you're traveling from Europe or South America or Asia, by the time you factor in the cost of your hotel and accommodation and a few days sightseeing, the ticket price is actually a relatively small percentage of your overall spend.
So do you think demand is high?
Do you think people will do that travel to the States and use it as a holiday and go and watch a football match at the same time?
Some people will.
I've been to World Cups myself and they've been amazing experiences and you want to replicate that.
I must confess, at these price points especially, that there was some research undertaken in the last few days by people I think it was the New York Times and they've seen that hotel prices for the host cities for match days are up around about 300.
So I think it is going to put some people off, but those people that have disposable cash and want something memorable – a bit like going to a Taylor Swift concert or the Foo Fighters or Oasis, wherever it's going to be they will stump up and pay up.
What impact that will have on the atmosphere of matches we await to see.
That was Kieran Maguire there, a football expert from the University of Liverpool in the north of England.
Kerry Leahy is with us.
He's an economist at Columbia University and in New York.
Kerry, are the prices in comparison to other big sporting events held in the US expensive if you compared it to the Super Bowl or something like that?
I would say from first glance it's probably only believe it or not, modestly higher than what the Super Bowl would cost.
But then again, this is an event that only happens once every four years.
And if the Super Bowl were so super, why would they have it next year?
So it's an annual event.
So you'd expect the prices to be lower for an event that happens every year versus four years ago.
But the prices really across the board are quite extraordinary.
And, as mentioned earlier, it's very hard to find an entry-level price, probably under a hundred dollars and, as some some of our friends may remember, four years ago the prices were much more reasonable.
So it's a huge jump over four years where, here in the states, you've just had a slow accretion of top end tickets for the last 10 or 15 years leading up to each year's super bowl.
Kerry leahy, thank you very much.
Stay there.
We will talk to you again in just a moment.
Want to know how to become the richest person in the world?
Start with the latest episode of our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire.
We're telling the story of how Elon Musk amassed half a trillion dollars from his troubled childhood in South Africa to buying Twitter and launching rockets into space, with all the boardroom dramas along the way.
Find out how he did it on Good Bad Billionaire.
Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
You're listening to World Business Report from the BBC World Service with me, Sam Fenwick.
Now to Kenya, where a judge has put the brakes on a huge new health funding deal with the United States, worth 25 billion, after worries that it could expose people's personal medical data.
A consumer rights group went to court arguing the agreement might allow the US to see sensitive information like HIV status or treatment records.
Kenya's president insists the agreement will still protect citizens' data.
Peterson Washira is the national chairperson for the Kenya Union of Clinical Officers.
And I spoke to him a little earlier on.
It is a question of trust deficit between the people and their government.
They don't believe that whatever the government is telling them is the truth.
They think that they have been given an edited version of the true picture of the document that was actually signed.
So it sounds like that there's always been trust issues between the Kenyan government and the people of Kenya and that this United States deal.
People probably wouldn't have trusted it anyway, because it doesn't sound like they trust the government.
Yeah.
I can assure you, if this was coming through the NGOs, through any other organization that is non-governmental, nobody would actually be questioning it.
It wouldn't even attract the attention that you're seeing.
It's not a problem of that deal.
It is a problem of mistrust between the people and their government.
I think the deal is just a victim of that.
Are you concerned that if this deal doesn't go ahead, then you might lose the money altogether?
I'm really concerned.
And beyond the money you know now the money what that would mean is that almost around 28000 health workers who are working under these programs would be rendered jobless.
Think about the livelihoods that are going to suffer.
Think about the children that will have to downgrade the schools they were going to.
They will no longer afford quality care from better facilities than they were going to, and they will have to settle for whatever is available there, if they can.
So it's something that is really going to affect not only the health workers, actually.
But look at, on the other side, there is the supply of the drugs, like the HIV, TB drugs.
What about those patients?
And they are very worried that they don't know whether the supply is going to be sustained, and especially with the deficits in funding from the government.
So it's a really concerning, concerning matter, and one that we would wish that is dispensed with as fast as possible so that then we can get back on track.
Peterson Washira there.
National Chairperson for the Kenyan Union of Clinical Workers.
So what about those concerns over data privacy?
Are they justified?
Mara Hansen-Staples is the founder and CEO of Salient Advisory.
It's a startup which is working to scale up and strengthen Africa's health tech sector.
She joins us now from Vancouver.
Are they right to be worried?
Is Peterson correct that if this deal had come through an NGO that it probably would have just got waved through and that it's just a trust issue?
Hi, Sam.
You know, I'm not surprised at all to hear that Kenyans see data sovereignty as critical.
I think this is an issue that's really important to patients, providers and businesses alike.
I think agreements on data privacy and protection are central to any partnership in health care right now, anywhere in the world.
And so what you see is the US and Kenyan government trying to balance how do we protect patients' data while acting with urgency to get health products and information and services to people who need them?
And how do we do that leveraging the best technology available?
So I think that hammering out these details, as they relate to both patient data but also public health because we know diseases don't respect national borders is really important.
And I'm glad to see these deals moving ahead quickly.
I'm also glad to see important consideration about patient privacy and public health at the fore.
Now, this is part of America's new global health aid strategy, which prioritises direct deals with governments rather than working through aid agencies, through organisations like USAID, which was shuttered earlier this year.
Lots of organisations lost funding overnight.
But does the approach that Kenya have taken here and taking it to court, risk funding being withdrawn completely if relationships with Washington might sour?
Well, you're absolutely correct.
The US government is stepping into a really new era in its approach to aid.
And they're shifting dramatically from an approach that was more charitable to an approach that centers cooperation.
You know they're looking at providing direct support to the government, centering their support around innovation and shifting from some large and longstanding investments in sort of parallel systems to investing, you know, cooperatively with the public, private and the faith-based sectors.
Of course, I think making this transition will be really challenging under short timelines.
But, you know, the centering of innovation is really one of America's real strengths.
And so it makes sense to me that they want to bring their best. to their partners around the world.
And you can really see that at the fore in these new deals with Kenya and other countries.
They've committed to introducing new medicines that are innovative, like lanacapavir, and to bringing in technology-driven approaches to supply chain, with companies like Zipline, who've pioneered drone delivery.
So we see an opening here, but of course it will be challenging to make this shift.
OK, thank you very much.
Mara Hansen-Staples there from Salient Advisory.
And I think the case goes back to court in February and we'll let you know here on the programme what happens there.
Now we heard from Donald Trump this week when he was talking in Pennsylvania, that tariffs is his favourite word.
And he said that quite a few times.
But it turns out that it's also Mexico's favourite word, because they're introducing up to 50 tariffs on Chinese cards and a range of other imports.
Let's talk to Kerry Leahy again, economist at Columbia University in New York.
Now, this is quite a change in policy, isn't it for Mexico, which for decades has had free trade agreements?
So why a change in policy?
Well, I think they see where the wind is shifting, and it's shifting towards a harder border, much like in the United States.
So in some sense they're pulling their own version of Donald Trump's view on tariffs to get Mexico better aligned with what the US would perhaps want them to do, and might figure out a way that will also help them as well.
So is it like a negotiating tactic to try and reduce tariffs between the U.S. and Mexico?
Yes, I think that's – thinking of it more as an aligned three parties that would also obviously include Canada would be probably quite beneficial.
And so having a uniform set of tariffs might actually work well in that way.
And I think also the United States and Mexico are concerned that they might be –
So I think this is a way to approach that or at least threaten to approach that problem.
It must also be part of these concerns that I think the Europeans have as well about China dumping stuff into markets as a result of US tariffs.
We've seen this week, haven't we, that lots of Chinese goods are going to different, different markets all over the place.
Well, that's exactly right.
I mean, you'd think in Europe they would have more restrictions on things like EV imports, and they don't have that yet.
So you have a country that has got tremendous overproduction and can be accused of dumping.
They can't dump it in Mexico and can't dump it in the U.S.
We've got to dump it in the EU.
Oh, gosh, we're going to get dumped somewhere.
Kerry Leahy, economist there from Columbia University.
Thank you very much for joining us today on World Business Report.
Thank you to you for listening.
That brings us to the end of this edition of the programme.
From the team here, thank you very much.
Now, don't forget, you can always subscribe to our podcast.
Search for World Business Report wherever you get your BBC podcasts and make sure you hit subscribe so that you never miss an episode.
Thanks for listening today.
I'm Sam Fenwick.
Thank you very much.
Want to know how to become the richest person in the world?
Start with the latest episode of our podcast, Good Bad Billionaire.
We're telling the story of how Elon Musk amassed half a trillion dollars from his troubled childhood in South Africa to buying Twitter and launching rockets into space, with all the boardroom dramas along the way.
Find out how he did it on Good Bad Billionaire.
Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
