Disney CEO Bob Iger said he sees “phenomenal opportunities” to use AI not just in production, but across the entire company in the months and years to come on Thursday’s quarterly earnings call.
Iger was asked about how the company views the opportunity or risk to license out its valuable IP to AI companies, and he touted the technology’s potential beyond just making movies or TV.
“As we look ahead, we see opportunities in terms of efficiency and effectiveness by deploying AI, not just in the production process, but really across our company as we engage with our cast members and our employees, but also our guests and our customers,” Iger said, specifically pointing to creating efficiency around the business itself and the direct-to-consumer platforms.
“There are great opportunities in terms of our collection of data and our mining of data. 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 to give consumers the opportunity to create on our platforms.”
In June, Disney and Universal sued AI platform Midjourney for copyright infringement over allowing its characters to be used for AI generation. Iger tipped to the ongoing litigation on the earnings call, but indicated Disney is also having “productive” conversations with some of the AI companies.
“We’ve been in some 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” Iger said.
The CEO noted it’s “imperative” to protect their IP with this technology, but he’s “hopeful that ultimately we’ll be able to reach some agreement in the industry or the company on its own with some of these entities that would, in fact, reflect our need to protect the IP.”
