Source: Puck
Bob Iger’s abandoned partnership with OpenAI shows the impossible math of legacy media trying to control AI on their terms—the deal was less about innovation than defensive positioning, an attempt to neutralize a threat by absorbing it rather than addressing Disney’s actual vulnerability (training data, creative labor, distribution). The collapse exposes a deeper problem: studios don’t yet know whether they need AI as a cost-cutting tool, a creative crutch, or a business model hedge, so they’re cycling through partnerships with major AI labs while their real competitive exposure—unauthorized use of their content in model training—remains largely unresolved.