The NYT's seemingly contradictory AI strategy is a deliberate two-pronged approach. Lawsuits enforce intellectual property rights and prevent unauthorized scraping, while licensing deals demonstrate a clear, sustainable market and fair value exchange for its journalism.

Despite the massive OpenAI-Disney deal, there is no clarity on how licensing fees will flow down to the original creators of characters. This mirrors a long-standing Hollywood issue where creators under "work for hire" agreements see little upside from their creations, a problem AI licensing could exacerbate.

The Disney partnership's primary value for OpenAI isn't the $1 billion investment, but the exclusive license to iconic IP. This provides a significant, albeit temporary, product and distribution advantage, creating unique generative experiences that differentiate ChatGPT from competitors and drive user engagement.

By striking a formal licensing deal for its IP, Disney gives a powerful counterargument against OpenAI's potential "fair use" claims for other copyrighted material. This willingness to pay for some characters while scraping others could be used as evidence in future lawsuits from creators.

The OpenAI-Disney partnership establishes a clear commercial value for intellectual property in the AI space. This sets a powerful legal precedent for ongoing lawsuits (like NYT v. OpenAI), compelling all other LLM developers to license content rather than scrape it for free, formalizing the market.

By partnering with one AI leader now, Disney gains crucial insights while positioning itself to incite a bidding war later. The strategy is to leverage its learnings to force competitors like Google and Meta to pay a premium for access to its valuable IP, ensuring it maximizes future revenue streams.

Instead of exclusive, all-encompassing deals, media conglomerates like Disney should strategically license separate parts of their IP portfolio (e.g., Pixar to Google, Marvel to Anthropic). This creates a competitive market among LLM providers, driving up the value of the IP and maximizing licensing revenue.

Disney is simultaneously suing Google for copyright infringement while signing a $1 billion licensing and equity deal with OpenAI for the same activity. This reveals a strategy where litigation is a tool to force AI labs into lucrative partnerships, rewarding the very infringement they are suing over.

Historically, the value of content IP like scripts and music declined sharply 30-60 days after release. AI tools can now "reimagine" these dormant libraries quickly and cost-effectively, creating new derivative works. This presents a massive, previously untapped opportunity to unlock new revenue streams from back catalogs.