Jeff Benson

There are plenty of tools that seem useful on paper, yet something makes us close the tab instantly.

Sometimes it s pricing, sometimes messaging, sometimes the onboarding feels unclear.

Often it s a gut feeling that s hard to explain.

Disney just announced a licensing deal with OpenAI that will allow users of OpenAI s Sora to generate short videos of its characters.

Just in case you ve forgotten what s in Disney s IP library, it s way more than Mickey and Goofy. It spans Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and a bunch of other properties. Not everything is included in the deal, though. For example, you ll get the illustrated Tony Stark, not the Robert Downey Jr. version.

Bloomberg reported today that Meta (read: Facebook) is "considering potential budget cuts as high as 30% for the metaverse group next year." That's the same group behind the Quest VR headsets and the online VR game Horizon Worlds. During its annual budgeting sessions, CEO Mark Zuckerberg usually asks execs to identify 10% in cuts, but "the metaverse group was asked to cut deeper this year given that Meta has not seen the level of industry-wide competition over the technology that it once expected."

Now, we're old enough to remember when Zuckerberg went all in on the metaverse in 2021. He, uh, even changed the company's name.