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AI Comes to Disney. How Will It Change the Company?

Photo from Clyde He via Unsplash

AI Comes to Disney. How Will It Change the Company?

By Movieguide® Contributor

Like many companies today, Disney is looking at how to bring AI into its everyday operations.

While the company itself hasn’t yet commented on its plans, an insider shared some details with TheWrap.

“The initiative is said to involve ‘hundreds’ of people at the company and will primarily focus on post-production and visual effects,” The Wrap reported. “One of the individuals said it would also involve parks and experiences, but not customer-facing.”

“A company insider told TheWrap that Disney was working on its own AI initiatives but not as expansively as suggested by the other sources. The insider said it was ‘too early’ to say when an announcement was coming,” the outlet continued.

John Werner writing for Forbes suggests that AI will “create 3-D immersive worlds with realistic graphics that are rendered in different ways than they were decades ago” and believes that AI in post-production will result in laying off “thousands of human workers as part of this initiative.”

LightShed Ventures analyst Rich Greenfield explained, “’Disney has always leaned into technology partnerships. It makes a tremendous amount of sense that Disney is heavily focused on this, but also putting substantial resources behind it.’”

Disney CEO Bob Iger previously hinted at his support for AI and its capabilities.

“Walt Disney himself was a big believer in using technology in the early days to tell better stories. And he thought that technology in the hands of a great storyteller was unbelievably powerful…Don’t fixate on its ability to be disruptive — fixate on [tech’s] ability to make us better and tell better stories. Not only better stories, but to reach more people,” Iger said.

The CEO also mentioned that since AI isn’t going away anytime soon, it should be embraced.

“You’re never going to get in the way of it. There isn’t a generation of human beings that has ever been able to stand the way of technological advancement,” he said. “What we try to do is embrace the change that technology has created and use it as the wind behind our backs instead of wind in our faces.”

While the full extent of AI’s role in entertainment hasn’t yet been fleshed out, it likely won’t replace human creativity altogether.

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos weighed on AI during an appearance on actor Rob Lowe’s podcast.

“I think that the creators who learn to use these tools better than everyone else are gonna win…not companies who create, but people who create,” Sarandos said.

However, he doesn’t believe AI would substitute for filmmakers since “it’s feasible that AI can replicate or imitate those things, but there’s something about the authenticity and the reality of human experience that people see, and they can also see when it’s inauthentic.”

READ MORE: WHY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WON’T REPLACE FILMMAKERS