Google is negotiating licensing deals with the largest Hollywood studios. The agreements would let the company train its AI models on films and series protected by copyright. Google is ready to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for access to the studios’ libraries, The Verge reports.
Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Universal have not given their formal consent yet. Google executives have already approached the leadership of several studios. They made specific proposals on cooperation and on the development of the company’s AI tools. Hollywood has already tried to defend its content against AI developers. In September 2025 Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and NBCUniversal accused the developers of the Chinese neural network Hailuo AI of using their characters without permission.
The company wants permission to train its models on the entire copyrighted content of the studio libraries. Pixar, the studio owned by Disney, could receive about $40 million, according to a source. That is the price of the right to generate content featuring a single character. The payments could grow to many billions if the deals cover many characters. Studios would also get a share of the advertising revenue Google earns from AI-generated content. That includes material used across the company’s own platforms, including YouTube.
However expensive the deals turn out to be, they could strengthen Google’s position in the AI market. The ability of Gemini to create images with Disney characters may not look significant at first. Yet such features could bring generative AI to people who are indifferent to technology.
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Content made through such partnerships will probably look better than content generated on illegally obtained data. Sony Music and Warner Music filed a lawsuit against Anthropic over songs used to train Claude. A Google logo on official AI-generated Disney content could also improve how the technology is perceived.
The risks are spread unevenly. Google is taking almost none, while the studios are. Cooperation could bring them a short-term gain, but in the longer run it may backfire. Audiences could end up feeling deceived by the entertainment industry.
