Disney is testing AI lyric videos with OpenArt, starting with 'Go the Distance' from Hercules

Disney is testing an AI video startup on its songs, and the first one is “Go the Distance” from 1997’s Hercules.

The Walt Disney Co. is testing OpenArt, a Bay Area AI video platform, to storyboard lyric videos from a song’s words, mood and emotional tone. The deal was announced on November 3, 2026, at the Disney Accelerator Demo Day in Burbank, as the Los Angeles Times reported.

Disney says its teams can now test several video concepts “in hours rather than weeks.” Nothing has been released yet, though. “Go the Distance” is the only song named, and Disney hasn’t said where a finished video would run.

How Disney’s OpenArt test turns ‘Go the Distance’ into a lyric video storyboard

A lyric video puts a song’s words on screen over moving images, so fans can read along while they listen.

Here’s how the test works. Disney feeds a song into OpenArt’s platform, and OpenArt builds a storyboard preview of a lyric video from the lyrics, the mood and the emotional tone. Disney’s team can change anything along the way and fine-tune the result.

Disney wrote in a blog post that working with OpenArt lets “creative teams iterate more freely, generating and evaluating multiple concepts in hours rather than weeks, enabling new fan experiences around Disney music between major releases.”

OpenArt CEO Coco Mao said Disney is “very excited to bring some of the older catalogs of the music and create visual lyrics videos for those songs.” She called it “early exploration” of how AI could fit into Disney’s creative workflow.

So older catalog songs are the target, and Hercules goes first. Which raises the obvious question: who is OpenArt?

What OpenArt is, and which AI models run its music video tool

OpenArt was founded in 2022 by former Google engineers Coco Mao and John Qiao. The company told the LA Times it has nearly 100 employees.

OpenArt’s platform works with many AI models, including Kling, Google Veo and Seedream, and business customers pick which ones to use. The LA Times didn’t say which models Disney’s team works with.

OpenArt’s public music video page is more specific about its own tool. It says Director mode “is powered by GPT Image 2 for the images and Seedance 2.0 for the motion visuals.” Seedance 2.0 is the ByteDance video model Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter over in February 2026.

The company also sells a tool that flags possible intellectual property infringement, the LA Times reported. OpenArt’s demo for its IP safety check marks each character in an image as cleared or flagged.

Disney has spent 17 months fighting AI firms over its characters. Here’s that record.

Why Disney’s AI lyric video test follows lawsuits against Midjourney and MiniMax

Disney and Universal sued Midjourney in June 2025. In September 2025, Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery sued MiniMax over its Hailuo video service. Then came the February 2026 letter to ByteDance.

Disney has tried deals, too. It announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI and a Sora licensing deal in December 2025, and it fell apart after OpenAI decided to shut Sora down. The deal never closed and no money changed hands.

In September 2026, Disney named Character.AI’s then-CEO Karandeep Anand as its chief technology officer. A month later, after Character.AI filed for bankruptcy, Disney offered $20 million to license some of its intellectual property. Other bidders can still top that offer.

OpenArt came in through the Disney Accelerator, which gives startups investment capital and time with Disney leaders. All 5 companies in the 2026 cohort are AI firms, Pirates & Princesses noted. They include Promise, which works on hybrid filmmaking, and Physical Intelligence, which tests robots that sort 3D glasses at the parks.

“We’re looking at how we can fit these companies into our existing workflows and help expedite that,” said David Min, Disney’s vice president of innovation.

Disney also sits in ARIAM, the AI policy coalition Sony Music joined in September. And in August, the Motion Picture Association, which counts Disney as a member, signed a memorandum with ByteDance covering IP protections in Seedance and Seedream.

Can independent artists use the same OpenArt lyric video tool as Disney?

Yes, OpenArt sells a public AI lyrics video generator, and you can start for free. The LA Times didn’t report whether Disney’s team uses that same product or a custom setup.

The public version, as OpenArt describes it:

• You start a Music Video in Director mode and pick the Lyrics Video style.
• You upload the song as an MP3, WAV or M4A file of up to 50MB.
• You add up to 10 images or videos as references, and cover art is the most common one.
• The finished lyric video can run up to 5 minutes.

OpenArt executive Chloe Fang, who runs its entertainment and enterprise partnerships, came to the company from music.

“

I was in a rock band, so I was one of the artists that know the pain of not having enough money or time or resource to make lyrics videos or any kind of videos to promote your song on social media.

The audience for this format is real. A fan-made “Go the Distance” lyric video, posted 6 years ago with the song in different languages over a Hercules scene, has 280,000 views on YouTube.

If you want to compare OpenArt against other options first, I tested 4 AI lyric video generators and 5 AI music video generators.

For Disney, the next answers are which song follows “Go the Distance,” and which channel posts the first finished video.