Walt Disney (DIS.N) has created a task force to study artificial intelligence and how it can be applied across the entertainment conglomerate, even as Hollywood writers and actors battle to limit the industry’s exploitation of the technology.
Launched earlier this year, before the Hollywood writers’ strike, the group is looking to develop AI applications in-house as well as form partnerships with startups, three sources told Reuters.
As evidence of its interest, Disney has 11 current job openings seeking candidates with expertise in artificial intelligence or machine learning.
The positions touch virtually every corner of the company – from Walt Disney Studios to the company’s theme parks and engineering group, Walt Disney Imagineering, to Disney-branded television and the advertising team, which is looking to build a “next-generation” AI-powered ad system, according to the job ad descriptions.
A Disney spokesperson declined to comment.
One of the sources, an internal advocate who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said legacy media companies like Disney must either figure out AI or risk obsolescence.
This supporter sees AI as one tool to help control the soaring costs of movie and television production, which can swell to $300 million for a major film release like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” or “The Little Mermaid.” Such budgets require equally massive box office returns simply to break even. Cost savings would be realized over time, the person said.
For its parks business, AI could enhance customer support or create novel interactions, said the second source as well as a former Disney Imagineer, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The former Imagineer pointed to Project Kiwi, which used machine-learning techniques to create Baby Groot, a small, free-roaming robot that mimics the “Guardians of the Galaxy” character’s movements and personality.
Machine learning, the branch of AI that gives computers the ability to learn without being programmed, informs its vision systems, so it is able to recognize and navigate objects in its environment. Someday, Baby Groot will interact with guests, the former Imagineer said.
AI has become a powder keg in Hollywood, where writers and actors view it as an existential threat to jobs. It is a central issue in contract negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America, both of which are on strike.
Disney has been careful about how it discusses AI in public. The visual effects supervisors who worked on the latest “Indiana Jones” movie emphasized the painstaking labors of more than 100 artists who spent three years seeking to “de-age” Harrison Ford so that the octogenarian actor could appear as his younger self in the early minutes of the film.
