Disney paying 1B over 3 years for Sora feels like

Disney paying $1B over 3 years for Sora feels like the moment frontier video models stop being toys and start being infrastructure. This is the first real test of what happens when a frontier model gets: - A blue‑chip IP firehose (Disney’s entire universe of characters and worlds) - Studio‑grade guardrails - Contractual obligations that look a lot like DRM, but for generative outputs In practice, Disney is turning OpenAI’s safety stack into a rights enforcement layer. The model is no longer only aligned to human values but also to their legal department. That means: - The model “knows” what you are allowed to generate and under what terms - Fanfic becomes a product category instead of a legal grey zone - Everything outside the licensed playground is quietly refused or never trained in For founders, this is the pattern to watch. The real moat is not only model quality. It is distribution of rights‑clean data plus enforcement baked into the stack. We are basically moving from “can the model do this?” to “is the model allowed to do this, and for whom?” Potentially scary stuff.