Disney Pivots to Embrace AI From Film to Parks

Disney Embraces AI It Once Fought, From Animation to Finance and Film While remaining protective of its valuable intellectual property, Disney is infusing AI into operations across the board. A century after Walt Disney Co. transfixed moviegoers with a hand-drawn mouse appearing on a silver screen with synchronized sound, the world’s biggest entertainment company is now exploring a new frontier in animation: artificial intelligence. In December, the company will bring Ozzy Fox, a children’s series rendered by AI, to its flagship Disney+ streaming platform. Ozzy Fox, about an orange character who regularly bursts into song, is the product of a year-long collaboration with French startup Animaj, whose AI tools convert artists’ hand-drawn images and text instructions into three-dimensional animation. It’s just one example of a wider mission, led by Chief Executive Officer Josh D’Amaro, to bring the 103-year-old home of Disney princesses, Pixar and Star Wars into the AI era. Just one week into D’Amaro’s tenure as CEO, OpenAI shuttered its Sora text-to-video platform, scuttling a planned three-year partnership that would have seen Disney invest $1 billion into the startup and license more than 200 of its characters for use in AI-generated short videos. Since then, the company has charted its own course and is leaning on artificial intelligence to upgrade every one of its units from finance to film. At the same time, Disney has been looking to cut costs, moves that have resulted in regular rounds of layoffs as the company’s traditional TV channels struggle to retain viewers and advertisers. D’Amaro’s embrace of AI marks a new approach for Disney. Under former CEO Bob Iger, Disney employed the carrot and the stick. It litigated against startups including Midjourney Inc. and MiniMax over alleged copyright infringement, after images featuring Mickey Mouse brandishing a machine gun or crude depictions of Disney princesses appeared on social media, while collaborating with one, OpenAI, which promised to act responsibly.