Google needs Hollywood more than the studios need AI

Google has reportedly been reaching out to a number of Hollywood’s biggest studios, hoping to strike licensing agreements that would allow it to train its AI models on copyrighted material in exchange for massive piles of cash. In theory, these deals would be a win-win: a huge financial boon to the studios that would also give Google a significant advantage in its race to outpace other AI companies. But while there’s little downside for Google, these deals pose a distinct set of risks to each of the studios that might be thinking about going all-in on AI. Getting into bed with Google this way might benefit Hollywood in the short term, but it could just as easily backfire and leave the public feeling burned by the entertainment industry.

Though Google has not yet been able to get Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, or Universal to agree to anything officially, the company’s executives have been reaching out to multiple studio representatives with pitches focused on its AI technology, according to unnamed sources speaking to The Los Angeles Times. Google wants permission to train its AI models on the studios’ vast libraries of copyrighted content, and it’s willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get ahold of them. Per The LA Times, Google could pay a studio like Disney / Pixar around $40 million just for the rights to generate outputs featuring a single copyrighted character. That payout could swell well into the billions the more characters Google’s deals encompass, and studios might be able to secure a portion of however much advertising revenue Google makes from AI-generated content featuring that IP on platforms like YouTube.

As expensive as these partnerships would be for Google, they would also be an invaluable tool as the company continues to crystalize its position as one of the most prominent players in the AI game. Gemini being able to spit out Disney-approved images of Darth Vader and Snow White might not seem all that significant on its face, but that’s exactly the sort of thing that could get more ordinary, non tech-obsessed people seeing generative AI in a more positive (if innocuous) light. After years of hearing AI companies boast about their plans to disrupt society and eliminate jobs, public sentiment — especially among young people — about the technology has shifted into the negative. Even with tools like ChatGPT being as popular as they are, the larger AI industry has been so mired in controversy and plagued by concerns about its real world harms that it would now be hard-pressed to put out products that would immediately curry widespread goodwill. Striking deals with film and TV studios would give Google a convenient way to shift the larger narrative about its AI ambitions.

The content developed through these partnerships would presumably look better than the slop currently being churned out by models trained on ill-gotten source data, and having Google’s name and logos slapped all over official AI-generated Disney content would do wonders to legitimize this technology in people’s minds. But even if it didn’t, the partnership would still signal to the public that the entertainment industry sees generative AI as a tool worth embracing. It’s hard to quantify how valuable that framing would be to Google, whose DeepMind arm struck a $75 million investment deal with A24 earlier this summer. But it’s very easy to imagine how taking Google’s AI cash could put studios on a path that ultimately alienates their workers and audiences.

Regardless of whether a studio were to incorporate AI tools into their production workflows or simply feature user-generated AI content on their platforms (which was Disney and OpenAI’s plan before their partnership collapsed), striking a licensing agreement with Google would be a watershed moment.

Lionsgate, a notable studio but not a major player, struck a licensing deal with Runway in 2024. So far, nothing concrete has come out of that partnership, but the companies say they’re working on a plan to release AI-generated shorts. Once any one of the big legacy studios hop on to the AI bandwagon and manage to actually make something they can show the world, more production houses have a reason to follow suit. AI’s potential to speed production timelines up while keeping costs down is one of the main things that has kept studios interested in utilizing the technology. Shareholders would absolutely love it if production houses could put out more movies while spending less money, but doing that by using AI tools would almost certainly put a significant portion of the entertainment workforce out of jobs.

What may be keeping Disney and other studios from rushing to take Google up on its offers is the way that people have reacted to seeing AI used in the production of films like Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Fans were dismayed to find AI-generated images in Brand New Day’s official artbook, and the negative reaction might have been even more intense had people known about the technology’s use before the film hit theaters. It’s impossible to know for sure whether awareness about AI’s presence in Brand New Day’s production would have kept it from making $2 billion at the box office. But it stands to reason that none of the studios is eager to be the first to learn what happens when they release a project that’s presented as being the product of Google’s AI tools.

Though Google has everything to gain from Hollywood embracing AI, the studios have to be mindful of how endorsing this technology could leave them out on a limb. And as much as Google might be presenting its products as the solution to all of the entertainment industry’s issues, the AI industry needs Hollywood more than Hollywood needs more slop.