Disney's landmark OpenAI deal is a huge endorsement of AI-created content by one of the world's foremost creative companies, Axios' Sara Fischer and Jeffrey Cane write.

• 💰What Disney gets: $1 billion of equity in OpenAI, plus the chance to buy more shares later.
• 🦹 What OpenAI gets: Access to over 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters and accessories (lightsabers!) for users of its Sora AI image and video generation tool — plus Disney's stamp of approval.

🧑‍⚖️ The partnership comes as an emerging legal campaign adds pressure on AI firms to strike deals with content companies.

• 🛑 Disney itself just sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google, alleging widespread copyright infringement for the use of its characters and IP across Google's AI products.

🧑‍🎨 There's also rising fear among actors, artists and other creators over AI's threat to their jobs — and to humanity's creative output more broadly.

• Notably, Sora users won't be able to use Disney actors' likenesses or voices under the deal.
• OpenAI also promises to implement responsible trust and safety measures, "including age-appropriate policies and other reasonable controls across the service."

📺 Disney CEO Bob Iger on CNBC today: "No human generation has ever stood in the way of technological advance, and we don't intend to try."

• "We've always felt that if it's going to happen, including disruption of our current business models, then we should get on board."

Go deeper.

An anti-vaccine organization founded by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants the FDA to yank the most widely used COVID vaccines from the market, Axios' Caitlin Owens reports.

• That's despite RFK's promises that he won't take vaccines away from anyone — and part of a growing call from vaccine skeptics to pull the shots.

Children's Health Defense this week filed a petition asking FDA commissioner Marty Makary to deem Moderna's and Pfizer's COVID vaccines "misbranded" and revoke their licenses due to a lack of "compliance with FDA regulations."

• 🚑 Its argument is based on the vaccines' conversion from emergency use early in the pandemic to full approval later on.

In other administrations, the move would be an extreme long shot.

• 👨‍💼 But Kennedy's personal ties to Children's Health Defense may improve its prospects.

Meanwhile: Last season's COVID vaccine significantly reduced kids' ER and urgent care visits, per new CDC data.

• Go deeper.

1. 👷 "The Architects of AI" are TIME's 2025 Person of the Year. Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs: "This year, no one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI." Behind the cover.
2. 🤖 OpenAI, Microsoft and Sam Altman are facing a wrongful death suit from the estate of a mother killed by her son. Lawyers allege ChatGPT "affirmed" the son's "paranoia and encouraged his delusions during a mental health crisis." Go deeper.
3. 💊 Eli Lily says its next-generation weight-loss drug helped people lose up to nearly 30% of their body weight — more than competitors' treatments, The Wall Street Journal reports (gift link).
4. 🛌 MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell announced he's running for Minnesota governor. A Trump loyalist who's pushed false election fraud claims, he joins a crowded field of Republicans seeking to take on Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. Go deeper.

Virgo, Cancer and Leo are the most popular astrology signs in the U.S., a new Washington Post analysis of voter data finds.

• 👶 That's because they line up with the most common birth months: August, September and July.

🦂 The least common signs: Capricorn, Sagittarius and Scorpio.

• ❄️ "They have the misfortune of falling near the Great Winter Birth slump," per The Post — roughly aligning with January, December and November, respectively.

Gift link.