Oct 01, 2025 13:11:00

Disney demands that AI conversation service 'Character.AI' stop using its characters, alleging that popular characters are being used for sexual exploitation

Disney has sent a letter to the AI chat service

Character.AI , demanding that it cease and desist from using its characters. Character.AI allows users to create and publish AI with character personalities and engage in conversations with them. Disney claims that its characters have been used for sexual purposes and for purposes that are harmful to children.

Scoop: Disney sends cease and desist letter to Character.AI
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/30/disney-characterai-cease-desist

Disney sent a cease and desist letter to Character.AI
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/30/disney-cease-and-desist-characterai-copyright.html

Character.AI allows users to create AI characters with their own personalities and have conversations with them. The AI characters they create can be made public to other users, and the Character.AI homepage features a wide variety of AI characters with different personalities.

Among the publicly available AI characters, there are many that mimic characters from anime and manga. For example, at the time of writing, the Popular column featured popular characters such as Tanjiro Kamado from '

Demon Slayer: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba ' and General Raiden from ' Genshin Impact .' These AI characters were created by users.

The search trends within Character.AI are as follows: The phrase 'NSFW,' which primarily refers to adult sexual content, is at the top of the results, indicating that many users are using Character.AI for sexual purposes.

Axios reported that Disney has sent a letter to Character.AI demanding that they stop using the characters.

According to the report, Disney claims that 'Character.AI contains numerous AI characters modeled after Disney characters, including those from Pixar films, the Star Wars series, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.' 'There are

reports (PDF file) alleging that Character.AI's AI characters have engaged in problematic behavior, including grooming, sexual exploitation, and emotional manipulation, against child users. This report highlights concerns about the use of Disney characters on Character.AI.'

In light of the above, Disney stated, 'Character.AI's chatbots infringe Disney's copyrights, in some cases are sexually exploitative, harmful and dangerous to children, and seriously damage Disney's reputation and credibility,' and asked Character.AI to stop using the characters.

A spokesperson for Character.AI told Axios, 'How intellectual property is handled is left to the discretion of the rights holder. We respond promptly to removal requests from rights holders. The Disney characters have already been removed.' In fact, a search for the phrase 'Mickey Mouse' yielded no results at the time of writing.

Disney is also suing Midjourney, an image-generating AI, for its unauthorized use of characters.

Disney and Universal are suing Midjourney, calling it a 'bottomless pit of plagiarism' - GIGAZINE