Morning Brew Daily - Disney Invests $1B in OpenAI & Time’s Person, or Architects, of the Year

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Episode 734: Neal and Toby discuss Disney's $1 billion deal with OpenAI and what it means for the future of it's characters and Sora. Next up, Time announces their person(s) of the year, hello AI! Then, an entertainment filled stock and dog of the week and all of the headlines you need to know heading into the weekend. Check out https://www.linkedIn.com/mbd for more. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning brew daily show. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, times 2025 person of the year is... And Disney and Open AI are in their enemies to lovers art. It's Friday, December 12th. Let's ride. Good morning and happy Friday. Swiss yodeling is finally getting the international recognition it deserves. This week, yodeling was among the 67 customs to be included on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list, which recognizes country-specific. civic traditions worth preserving. Also being honored this year, Italian cooking, Iceland's swimming pool culture, and the Zafah wedding procession in countries like Djibouti, where the family

breaks an egg on the groom's head. So if you're looking for some culturally inspired travel ideas, this list is a great place to start. Nations, though, do have a love, hate relationship with UNESCO, because getting recognized can obviously bring a lot of tourists, but also the term UNESCO side has been coined by an Italian journalist because of the throngs of tourists that it brings to certain places and how maybe it destroys the culture you're there to preserve. So sorry yodeling. Your days are numbered because throngs of Midwesterners are about to descend upon your country and ruin it all. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn ads. Toby, when was the last time you ate? Uh, breakfast? Ah, see, you're not hip with the you speak like I am. I mean eight as an

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AI video platform. Disney is also investing $1 billion into Open AI alongside the license with CEO Bob Eiger calling this a quote critical moment for the industry viewing the opportunity as a chance to thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling. This is the largest equity investment by any Hollywood studio into an AI company, a big departure after months of hesitation and fear from most creative industries, fear of training data misuse, angering labor unions, and giving up control of their IP, have made the two industries feel more like oil and water.

But Disney was comfortable shaking things up, albeit with a few guardrails. While you'll be allowed to generate a video of Woody riding a bull, for instance, You won't get access to Tom Hanks's voice saying, he-hah, human faces and voices within Disney's stable of IP are not up for use, nor will any of the franchise's music. Neil, many view this as a crossing the Rubicon moment for the industry, joining forces with the AI Death Star, louder than rebelling against it.

But AI is both a threat and a growth opportunity. Iger and Disney are hoping the latter outweighs the former. Yeah, a lot of ways to look at this deal. I think the first one is that it's a signal to the marketplace that Disney is on the cutting edge of technology. Yes, it may be a company that's over 100 years old, but it's constantly looking to the future, and it has done that with its partnerships with Apple. And then recently, a couple years ago, invested $1.5 billion into epic games to get its characters into that company's game of Fortnite. Now it does $1 billion into OpenAI, and it gets its

characters into Saurin. Bob Eiger said this was a play for the youth. We know that America's kids, international kids are increasingly looking to YouTube and user-generated content instead of maybe Disney's longtime characters. This is a way that whatever technology the use are using, that Disney's characters will be front of mind. It might be an admission, too, that Bob Iger realized that you can't really control what people are going to do with your characters on the internet today. Open AI was already under heat for allowing people to generate very close to their characters in the app already. So he's like, might as well get ahead of it. might as well participate in the upside by this equity investment if people were going to do it

anyways. And also, I think that they were looking ahead to the fact that maybe their characters could be used in some not so kid-friendly mannerisms. And so by having open AI on your side, you can crack down on some of those edge use cases that were probably happening. But now you have some guardrails in place to prevent that. So what does it mean for open AI? Well, many analysts were looking at this as perhaps open AI coming from it, coming from this from a defensive posture, wasn't that advantageous of a deal for open AI because if you look at Sora, a few months ago, SORA came to the App Store and it was being downloaded crazy. Like it was the number one app and all those videos were going viral on other social media platforms. But if you look at App Store downloads on

Apple and Google in the past few weeks, it had been declining. And perhaps that's because all these media companies were cracking down on the IP being used. on SORA on that platform. So it is an admission that perhaps people won't use SORA unless they can do weird stuff with Mickey Mouse or Mike Wazowski, and so they have to come to the table to this deal and actually pay content creators for the use of their characters.

The battle lines are being drawn here as well because in the same breath that Open AI and Disney announced this deal, Disney also said, we're suing Google because of the same things that we've described are happening on its platform as well. you can go on to Gemini, you can go on to Nanobanana and generate very similar characters to Disney characters. And so Disney is calling this a massive copyright issue and are doing a big lawsuit against Google right now.

So again, this is another reason why Open AI probably wanted to get ahead of this because they were going to be staring down a similar lawsuit. So you can see exactly the two paths diverge in the woods. One is trying to do it by the book and the other Google is just trying to get away with it potentially. they both, I don't know where they both lead, but it probably leads to Mike Wazzowski doing something crazy. Time Magazine released its 2025 person of the year yesterday. And gosh, Toby, you were so close. Instead, the organization went with architects of AI, including NVIDIA's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, AMD's Lisa Sue, and Faye Faye Lee, known as the godmother of AI. Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacob said, person of the year is a powerful way to focus the world's attention on the people that shape our lives.

And this year, no one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI. Time magazine stresses that its person of the year award isn't an endorsement of their actions, just the quote, person or persons who most affected the news in our lives for good or ill and embodied what was important about the year for better or for worse. And with AI, time highlighted the better and the worse. In terms of the benefits, they said AI could facilitate communication with whales, crush existing hurricane prediction models, and lead to medical breakthroughs that save lives. At the same time, AI guzzles energy, threatens jobs, enables cyber attacks, and obliterates our sense of reality.

Furthermore, it's being controlled by a small concentration of ultra-wealthy business leaders, the same people it deemed their people of the year. Right, choice, Toby? I think so. I mean, facilitating communication with whales is top-of-the-line stuff right there. This was a confusing year for Times person of the year because it's not really a person. like architects of AI, it's multiple people. And the reason I am talking about the confusion is prediction markets sort of broke around this. Betting on the Times person in the year has become one of the most popular prediction markets for a lot of people. It regularly sees very high volumes.

So if you look at what happened, two different things are going down on call sheet and Polymark, the two biggest ones. Polymarket said that the Times person in the year was Architects of AI, but they only added that option literally late yesterday. So, no one really had the chance to actually bet on it. So everyone says, this is kind of a scam. We didn't even have a chance to do this because no one knew this was going to be an option. Then Kalshi, on the other hand, said anyone who was kind of named in the article or on the cover was the person in the year.

So Mark Zuckerberg contract resolved as yes. Elon Musk resolved as yes. All of these people, Fay-Fei Lee resolved as yes. So two different decisions from these prediction market makers with a lot of people unhappy because what most people were wagering on AI. Yeah, just the entity of AI being, that was by far the favorite leading into this. And yet it came out as architects of AI and yet they never allowed the AI betters to win in this case. So just confusing.

If you bet on AI and you resolve to know that you are pissed and there were a lot of social media comments about that. And yes, every major event these days has an A plot and a B plot. The A plot is what actually happened. And then the B plot is what is going down on predictions. Marcus because there's always so much controversy. Let's talk about the A plot a little bit, the architects of AI. Time Magazine said this was third in a series that captured key moments of technological revolution over the past half century. In 1982, their person of the year was the personal computer and they highlighted Steve Jobs and talked about this as being

a computing revolution. And then in 2006, I know if you all remember this, Times person of the year was you. Everyone remember. And that was meant to. Yeah, everyone remembers that. that was meant to celebrate or remark upon the rise of digital communities. And its set time was like, yeah, we absolutely nailed it with those technological breakthroughs in 1982, the computer in 2006, the rise of digital communities. And it thinks it has another one on its hands with the architects of AI in 2025. It was very ironic, too, given the fact that Oracle was having a down week, it kind of dragged down most of the AI stocks around it.

So on the day that architects of AI was named time person a year, Nvidia, in AMD were read Microsoft and meta were red. Corweave was down. All of the kind of AI adjacent stocks had a really rough day. So just a little bit of hint of irony right there. Welcome to Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, the segment where Toby and I pick one stock they got on Santa's Nice List and another that's expecting a lump of coal. I won the pre-show Gingerbread House making competition, so I get to go first. And my winner is Warner Brothers because just like Zendaya and Challengers, it pays to have two men going to war over you. Shares of Warner Brothers' discoveries soared 16% this week as investors anticipate a bidding war

between Netflix and Paramount for control of the iconic Hollywood Entertainment Company. Just to recap how we got here, a week ago, Warner Brothers agreed to sell its movie studio and HBO Max to Netflix and a cash-and-stock deal that sent tremors across Hollywood. But turns out that was just the pilot episode in this unfolding drama. On Monday, another suitor, Paramount, launched a hostile bid for Warner Brothers telling shareholders, we'll pay you 30 bucks per share all cash, which beats Netflix's offer. Plus, we think you have a clear path to regulatory approval, something that could sink a Netflix takeover. Now, rule number one of a hostile takeover attempt is they typically lead to higher bids,

which is why Warner Brothers share price has been soaring. Investors are betting that Paramount or Netflix, or most likely both, will come back to the negotiating table with more money, driving Warner Brothers value higher. After all, Paramount even wrote that it's $30 per share bid wasn't in. its best and final offer. And look, I didn't go to negotiating school, but it seems like this means this isn't their best and final offer. That is the funniest part.

It goes, hey, this is our offer. Don't accept it. We'll definitely go higher, which is actually why a lot of people are saying Paramount probably will win this because they are willing to go higher. But man, it's nice to be wanted. Who is the winner of all this? Just the person at the middle of everything,

which is Warner Brothers. Everyone wants Warner Brothers all of a sudden. As for who's in the lead right now, it's always hard to say, but right now, I hate to go back to prediction markets again, but it's looking like Paramount has surged above Netflix. It was trading around 65% on both Kalshi in Polly Market. By the way, every time we talk about this story, it seems like something changes later in the day.

So I'm hesitant to say one way or the other. But talking, some newspapers talked to some major media investors who were relaying that they are going to probably tell their clients to tender the offer of Paramount. They think that what you mentioned, the regulatory approval and the fact that it's a higher cash offer both mean it's a better deal for shareholders. So that is why it's gaining some momentum with some of the institutional class as well. Paramount also has a lot more wiggle room with its investors. It has billions, tens of billions of dollars of Middle Eastern money that it's throwing at Warner Brothers Discovery. And at the same time, Netflix shareholders have very much balked at this bid.

The company has lost $100 billion since September when rumors first started that it was making eyes at Warner Brothers. Netflix shareholders don't like this deal at all, and they're selling off the stock, which will further hamstring its ability to try to outbid Paramount, should Paramount, come back with $5 per share more, $10 per share more. So we'll see Netflix shareholders seem to be in revolt right now. You said every story seems to have an A plot and a B plot these days. I think the B plot in this one stands for billionaire because David Zaslov, who is, is the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, who is kind of orchestrating this deal, will likely become

a billionaire CEO if the deal goes through. He has very high stock-based compensation packages tied to share performance of Warner Brothers. And he would join a pretty rarefied air. There's not that many billionaire CEOs, not billionaire founders. Tim Cook from Apple is one. Sight and Adela from Microsoft is one. Jamie Diamond from JP Morgan. These are people who did not found the companies they are leading and yet are still have that billionaire status. So good luck to David's last lab. The B stands for billionaire. All right. We're going to take a quick break and come back with our dog of the week. Good sleep is everything. That's why Ali's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L. Deionine for both kiddos and grownups. So when your mind won't switch off,

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Seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to homebopo.com slash price match for details. My dog of the week is new music because 2025's top hits are mostly from 2024. More than half of this year's biggest songs aren't from this year at all. If you look at the top songs of 2025 using data from Billboard, you'll only find seven that were actually released in 2025. 16 are from 2024 and one song in the top 10 came out in 2023.

Shout out Teddy Swims lose control. You'll also find 2024 stalwarts like Benson Boone's Beautiful Things, Suboozy's A Bar Song, and Kendrick Lamar's not like us, firmly entrenched in this year's top 10. The same thing is reflected in big streaming services end-of-year list as well, with APT, perched atop Apple's most stream songs list, and die with a smile, a 2024 collab between Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars leading Spotify's list. A few things are going on here, Neil. one, bangers are bangers

and people aren't just going to stop listening to songs when the calendar changes. But also, maybe this is the new normal. Before streaming, charts only captured one-time purchases, not repeat listening. So maybe this has always been happening and it's the charts that are for the first time accurately reflecting it.

Before 2020, no song spent more than 40 weeks in the top 10 of the Billboard Top 100. Now, eight songs have achieved that. We are living in the era of sticky singles. I think one of the main factors here is choice paralysis. When you log on to Spotify, it's kind of like going to the grocery store and going to the hot sauce aisle where there's just so many things. So you always just go back to Pete's like you know, it's just like to Tula. You always go back to Chula.

You always go back to whatever is already in your fridge. I think that's what's happening here when people go on to any music streaming service. In music alone, an average of 99,000 new tracks are delivered to streaming platforms each day. And when I talk to people about what music they listen to, they often just say, oh, I just go to whatever Spotify tells me to listen to. And often, Spotify is going to those top lists from the past couple years. And those are the things that are generating all of these streams, which is why we see music from 2024 and 20203 back on the top of the list because people are just turning to Spotify algorithms and playlist. And that's what's on there. I do think, too, 2024 was full of bangers.

I mean, it was a breakout year for Sabrina Carpenter, Charlie XEX, Chapel Rhone, Benson Boone, Teddy Swims, Shibuzi. Like, it was a really good year for music. And I was kind of poking through some Reddit threads reacting to this. And they really were just saying, like, sorry that there was just a lot of good music. Like, I'm going to keep listening to good songs. Like, the calendar doesn't actually matter. So why are we getting so wrapped up?

Some were just poking holes in billboards and methodology. as well, saying that they stop measuring at September, tried to get away from like Christmas songs populating too much of the list. Anyway, they were basically saying that, like, let's not sleep on the fact that we just came off a really good year of music, which is why that music is still on these top lists.

Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Lulu is getting a new new CEO and it's making shareholders go go go. Current Lulu Lemon CEO Calvin-Cdonald announced yesterday that he step down in January, causing shares to jump 10% in after hours trading. The announcement comes after reports that estranged founder Chip Wilson, who has been rallying support in a proxy battle behind the scenes looking to regain influence over the board in the direction of the company. Wilson, who was ousted for a series of inappropriate comments, has been frustrated with

McDonald telling people that he can speak Wall Street but kills innovation. Wilson has a point, even though Lulu's sales have tripled under McDonald's. American revenue is falling and shares are down over 51% this year as analysts and customers alike question the brand's creative direction. Neil Lulu is having a bit of an identity crisis as its controversial founder is lurking in the shadows. Spicy stuff. So awkward when the founder of the company and the former CEO

is just posting mean things about the company on LinkedIn. He even took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal saying the company was in a, quote, nose dive and it needed to stop chasing Wall Street at the expense. of customers. And Lulu, yes, reported a 7% increase in sales last quarter. But basically all of that was opening new stores in international markets. Revenue in the Americas was down 2%.

It's clearly not so cool anymore compared to other athleisure brands like Allo and Vori. At the same time, it might be facing broader headwinds in the athleisure market. We've talked this year a bunch about how denim is winning out and people are looking, are dressing up a little bit. Maybe not to go to the airport, but they are wearing a lot more jeans as opposed. to Lou Lemon's ABC pan. So I'm at a loss. I don't know exactly what Lulu has to do

to get its cool back. I mean, that's something that every apparel brand wants to get. And right now, Lulu doesn't have it. It does not have it. I think the anecdotes from people wearing it is that it used to be the highest quality. I mean, you would buy Lulu stuff. It would last you forever.

Now it seems like they're slipping in quality as well as not really innovating at all over the last couple years. One big push for the company has been these logo collabs with the NFL in Disney where they're just slapping logos on stuff. And that's kind of what you do when you're at your wits end. We're like, I don't know how to make a new ABC pant.

Let's put a giant logo on this and maybe people will buy it because they like the logo. So yes, for a while, I think the energy around Lulu has been bad. Maybe what they need is a return of the founder's CEO. New York's hottest club is in Terminal 5 of JFK Airport, where JetBlue is about to open its first ever exclusive lounge. The lounge called Blue House and debuting next week is the clear sign yet that the struggling airline is going upscale to compete with the big dogs like Delta United and American who make most of their money from the kind of people who frequent airport lounges. Jeplu's entrance into the space is modest, capped at 140 people, but it won't be lacking in calories. Before your flight, you'll be able to snag classic New York fair like bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches and pastrami on rye. Well, that is if you have JetBlue's MasterCard, find yourself at the top tier of its loyalty program.

or flying in business class across the Atlantic. Toby, can JetBlue rebrand itself as a posh airline? The points guy who, you know, talks a lot about credit card said, this was once unthinkable for JetBlue because JetBlue only had coach seating until 2014. So this is a big departure from its identity going up market. Like every single airline is going up market right now to try to attract those big spenders. But I don't know. Why wouldn't they be able to pull it off?

The lounge itself seems pretty dang cool. they have a neon sign above the toilet that says live, laugh, lav. So I don't know if that turns you off when you're going to the bathroom or if, you know, it's just kind of a quirky thing that JetBlue has. But I think I'm also bullish because of the intimacy factor. 140 people is not that many people. What have everyone been complaining about recently overcrowding of airport lounges? So maybe if they keep a cap on it, make it feel upscale, you know, have those live, laugh,

live signs hanging above. I'm scared to think what kind of art you have in your house. If you think that's cool. I mean, that's the worst thing I've ever heard. Let's just be clear. But maybe... The idea is you take a picture of it. Yeah, you take a picture.

You take a pilgrimage show. I don't see why they wouldn't be able to pull it off. Finally, there's a new front in the culture war, fonts. Marco Rubio ordered an about face and tight face at the State Department, instructing diplomats to stop using Calibri and returns the more traditional script of Times New Roman. The backstory here is that in 2023, the Biden administration shifted to the Sands Serif Calibri to aim to make paperwork more accessible to readers with disabilities. But as part of a systemic dismantling of all DEI policies, Rubio brought back the seriffs,

telling everyone that Times New Roman in 14-point font was a new standard. The difference in these two fonts is very minor. Literally a few decorative flourishing strokes at the tops and tails of letters. but in the eyes of the Secretary of State, the change was a wasteful diversity move that needed to be unrolled. Well, Calibri is down bad right now because not only did it get booted from the State Department's official communications,

but it was also replaced two years ago in Microsoft Word by something called APTO. So Calibri is on the down swing. Another learning here is just how emotional people get about fonts. You said these two don't look that a lot different, but I think they are quite different. and people have a lot of thoughts about that. The one thing that we do have to point out

is when researching this story, if you go to Google and type in a popular font, whether that's Impact, Times New Roman, or Calibri, then everything in that page will go to that font. So check it out. It's super fun, and that was something that Toby discovered while looking around. I was very excited to discover that.

I also, unfortunately, discover that if you Google 6, 7, the entire webpage shakes in the, you know, mimicking the motion that kids make with their hands. So to Google Easter eggs yesterday, I was feeling pretty dang accomplished. And finally, the final note on this story is that I realized before 2004, when the State Department switched to Time New Roman, they were using Courier new. And Currier is that very typewritery, old-timey font that you see on movies when they're talking about, like, Vietnamese, Vietnam, like, war diplomatic cables. things like that. So they were using that font until 2004. I like that. Go back to the traditional font of yours. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. If you want to get in touch, you can send a note to

Morning Brew Daily at Morningblue.com or DM us on Instagram at MB Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Yenua Ogu is our technical director. Hair and makeup has a launched their campaign for People of the Year, 2026. Devin Emery is our president and our shows of production of Porni Brew. Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel

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