Despite describing their service as being ‘like fan fiction, but in an interactive form‘, while conceeding that ‘it’s always up to rightsholders to decide how people may interact with their IP‘, Character.AI have come up against the full force of the House of Mouse as Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter after Disney characters including those from animation, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars (including Luke Skywalker, Padme Amidala, Darth Vader, Yoda, The Mandalorian and C-3PO) were used on the Character.AI platform.
Here is the letter in full:
“It has come to Disney’s attention that Character Technologies, Inc. (‘Character.ai’) has been using Disney’s copyrighted characters as interactive chatbots in its commercial Character.ai service without authorization. Apparently trained without authorization on Disney’s copyrighted works, the Character.ai service features countless chatbots that exploit Disney’s copyrighted works and trademarks, presenting immersive versions of Disney’s famous and beloved characters.
These actions mislead and confuse consumers, including vulnerable young people, to believe that they are interacting with Disney’s characters, and to falsely believe that Disney has licensed these characters to, and endorsed their use by, Character.ai. In fact, Character.ai is freeriding off the goodwill of Disney’s famous marks and brands, and blatantly infringing Disney’s copyrights. Even worse, Character.ai’s infringing chatbots are known, in some cases, to be sexually exploitive and otherwise harmful and dangerous to children, offending Disney’s consumers and extraordinarily damaging Disney’s reputation and goodwill.
Disney will not allow your company to hijack its characters, damage its brands, or infringe its copyrights and/or trademarks. Character.ai’s conduct is egregious and must stop immediately.”
