Though Disney may be pushing back publicly against Blackwells Capital’s board recommendations, the company is no stranger to AI. In 2023, Disney created a task force to explore all manner of potential AI innovations across the company’s many different business platforms. Like other major entertainment and technology companies, it released job listings for numerous AI-centric positions, all against the backdrop of the Hollywood unions striking for better protections against the technology.
“AI research at Disney goes back a very long time and revolves around all the things you see being discussed today,” one executive told Reuters in August 2023. “Can we have something that helps us make movies, games, or conversational robots inside theme parks that people can talk to?”
Those same goals have brought anxiety to creatives in Disney’s industry. CEO Bob Iger has been extremely vocal about his desire to cut costs at the company, and with the massive wave of layoffs that’s swept over Disney in the past year — cutting more than 7,000 jobs – such enthusiastic discussion of technology that could eliminate more human positions is understandably frustrating for some.
