Disney CEO says AI is an 'engagement engine' and Disney+ is soon gonna be crammed to bursting with it

Disney CEO Bob Iger says the company's Disney+ streaming platform is about to undergo "the biggest and the most significant changes from a product perspective" since its 2019 launch and, surprise surprise, it's all about AI.

Iger was speaking on Disney's quarterly earnings call this Thursday (thanks, Variety) and, in the context of Disney+ merging with Hulu, went into the platform's future with AI-based games and user-generated content (UGC). Disney+ should be "a portal to all things Disney," said Iger, and "with the deployment of AI" it can be used "as an engagement engine for people who want to go to our theme parks, want to stay at our hotels, want to enjoy our cruises, our cruise ships. And obviously, there’s a huge opportunity for games."

In one way this is just Disney being Disney: the entertainment giant already offers an incredibly vast and varied catalogue with countless world-famous brands, and ever since the original Disneyland has offered its most devoted fans that wraparound experience of a fantasy vacation.

"There are great opportunities in terms of our collection of data and our mining of data," a breathless Iger told analysts. (Bob, you're not supposed to say that part out loud.) "And I’d say above all else, there’s phenomenal opportunities to deploy AI across our direct-to-consumer platforms, both to provide tools that make the platforms more dynamic and more sticky with consumers, but also give consumers the opportunity to create on our platforms."

So this is twofold. First there's Disney's $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games. Iger says that most of the fruits of this investment "will largely be on their platform", ie the Epic Games Store, but it also "gives us an opportunity to integrate a number of game-like features into Disney+."

Iger didn't detail what those would be, though a variety of casual-style games featuring Disney brands seems the obvious starting point, because then he got onto UGC and AI with the example of a user creating their own version of the character Stitch.

"The other thing that we’re really excited about that AI is going to give us the ability to do is to provide users at Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user generated content and to consume user generated content, mostly short form from others."

The Dumbo in the room is that Disney is already engaged on another front against AI: the company is notoriously litigious over, or if you prefer protective of, the use of its copyrighted works. And AI companies have been using them. Disney took legal action earlier this year, alongside NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery, to sue AI companies Midjourney and MiniMax, seeking both compensation and injunctions against using its IP.

The above may well be because Disney has other irons in the fire, with Iger saying the company has had "interesting conversations with some of the AI companies, and I would characterize some of them as quite productive conversations as well, seeking to not only protect the value of our IP and of our creative engines, but also to seek opportunities for us to use their technology to create more engagement with consumers. And we feel encouraged by some of the discussions that we’re having."

One wonders what the outcome of such discussions would be. Disney IPs available in a very limited sense on the AI platforms that play ball? External LLMs taking their users into the Disney ecosystem to do so? While, presumably, the AI companies that don't agree to a deal get the Disney lawyer treatment.

Iger didn't name any firms that Disney was in discussion with. "I’m hopeful that ultimately we’ll be able to reach some agreement with the industry or companies," he said, that'll "reflect our need to protect the IP."

Some of what Iger's talking about is, as these things go, unremarkable. Essentially minigames and shortform video generators featuring beloved characters. That whole overarching goal of soft-locking users into the Disney+ ecosystem by going all-in on engagement though… that's one of the problems that existing AI models have run into and you wonder if, in some extreme scenario, we're going to end up with Disney die-hards who think they're talking to Walt as a machine god through the telly. Tell you what I'd like, Bob: can AI create a proper ending for Alien Earth season one please?