Credit: DisneyThe Walt Disney Company is quietly moving forward with the most controversial new technology in the media industry, even as arguments over it threaten to shut down all movies and television.
In the last two years, Disney had an unusual number of disappointing film releases, most particularly the Toy Story spinoff Lightyear (2022), the family adventure movie Strange World (2022), and Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023).
While the company has long been one of the most dominant film studios in the world (particularly after the acquisition of both Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm), it is estimated by some that Disney could lose nearly a billion dollars.
At the same time as Disney’s box office grosses have been going down, the production and marketing costs of prestige movies have been rising, creating a negative loop of diminishing profitability for the iconic company. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania alone had a production budget of $200 million; with huge expenditures like that, the company has to find other ways to cut costs.
Related: Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Beloved Disney Characters Soon?
Artificial Intelligence Conflicts
According to a new report by Reuters, Disney is actively pursuing artificial intelligence and machine learning as a strategy of reducing costs for their gargantuan movies. It seems Disney has gone so far as to form an AI task force to figure out how it can best use the controversial new technology without raising too many red flags.
Currently, the entertainment industry is at a deadlock at the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) remain on strike, preventing studios from using massive labor pools of workers.
To a very large degree, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes were prompted by the unions’ concern over AI taking over their livelihoods and demanding legal protections (as well as living wages) against machine learning.
While most of the major studios have tried to make as few comments as possible regarding the strikes, it is clear that their pursuit of AI tech is a major factor. Notably, a damning new statement from the strikers claims that background extras on the Disney+ series Wandavision were AI body-scanned without their agreements, knowledge of what it would be used for, or pay.
Related: Disney Increases Foreign Hiring During Entertainer Strike
Disney Has Been Developing New Tech for Years
While Disney rarely makes comments about its use of AI in digitally-enhanced films like The Little Mermaid (2023), preferring to emphasize the work of human animators and technicians, it clearly has been working to actively develop tech to reduce the costs of actors and writers as much as possible.
That makes it unlikely that Disney is truly willing to sit at the negotiating table with its workers.
Disney has been slowly introducing AI-driven technology into its films and theme parks (such as the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser hotel), and the fact that it is quietly developing teams and a task force as the unions that do the work that the company profits off of clearly shows it is not slowing down any time soon.
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