Disney hates the idea of fans using its intellectual property in social media posts. The Financial Times reports that Microsoft has modified Bing's image generator "after concerns were raised over a viral social media trend where users created realistic Disney film posters of their dogs, highlighting broader copyright issues in the industry." The horror!
The tool, based on DALL-E, was later updated to accept the term "Disney," but generated images still showed altered versions of Disney's logo to avoid infringement. Microsoft told the Financial Times that it would further modify the image-generating algorithm so that "artists, celebrities, and organizations can request to limit the creation of images associated with their names and brands."
It appears that people have already figured out how to get Bing's DALL-E to produce images of Mickey Mouse. The trick, according to journalist Harry McCracken, is to describe Mickey without using his name:
I asked ChatGPT to generate Mickey Mouse, and it refused, stating, "I cannot create images of copyrighted characters." When I prompted it with "Generate an image of a 1930s cartoon mouse with round black ears, no whiskers, and red overalls with white buttons" it gave me this cute image.
Midjourney happily generated "Mickey mouse holding a molotov cocktail":
