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If you can’t beat ’em, hire ’em. The Walt Disney Company has named Character.AI CEO Karandeep Anand as its first company-wide chief technology officer, further indicating that artificial intelligence will play a major role in the future of the House of Mouse. Anand will join Disney on October 2 and report directly to CEO Josh D’Amaro. He will oversee the company’s technology infrastructure, data and AI platforms, and product and engineering teams. Several members of Character.AI’s technical staff are also expected to follow him to Disney.
The appointment gives an outspoken advocate for generative AI considerable influence over the technology used throughout Disney’s film, TV, streaming, and parks businesses. At Character.AI, Anand promoted AI-generated entertainment and interactive storytelling, arguing that audiences increasingly want to participate in stories rather than simply consume them. The company recently expanded into AI-generated comics and animated vertical microdramas.
Character.AI has also attracted intense scrutiny. The company settled lawsuits involving teenagers who died by suicide or harmed themselves following interactions with its chatbots. Disney itself sent Character.AI a cease-and-desist letter in 2025, accusing the platform of unauthorized use of Disney characters and warning that its chatbots could damage the company’s brands.
Before joining Character.AI in 2025, Anand held senior positions at Brex, Meta, and Microsoft, where he helped develop the Azure cloud platform.
His hiring comes as Disney pushes deeper into genAI despite widespread concern among animation workers that the technology could eliminate jobs, appropriate artists’ work, and reshape how entertainment is produced.
Image from The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse