Previously head of Character.AI, Karandeep Anand is now Disney’s chief know-how officer.
Disney hasn’t been a giant fan of the obvious copyright infringement that makes the AI trade potential, going so far as to threaten corporations like Midjourney and Character.AI for utilizing its mental property. The corporate can be apparently prepared to let bygones be bygones — Disney has introduced that it is hiring Karandeep Anand, the previous CEO of Character.AI, as its first chief know-how officer.
“Karandeep brings a uncommon mixture of expertise throughout infrastructure, client know-how and AI, and shall be a significant addition to Disney’s senior management crew as we additional our three priorities: nice storytelling as our North Star, know-how in service of creativity, and working as One Disney,” Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro stated in an announcement. “He additionally has actual enthusiasm and respect for Disney, a transparent sense of the place know-how and creativity meet and shares our perception that know-how creates essentially the most worth when it helps folks do their finest work.”
Since changing into CEO in February, D’Amaro has leaned laborious into Disney’s capabilities as a know-how firm, pitching the Disney+ streaming service and app as central to its future. Hiring Anand, and making him a direct report, is an extra try to promote that concept. As CTO, Disney says Anand will oversee issues like enterprise know-how and the corporate’s information and AI platforms, and produce a number of of Character.AI’s technical employees together with him within the course of. As a part of his hiring, Selection writes that Disney can be selling Adam Smith, the previous chief product and know-how officer for Disney Leisure and ESPN, to a brand new position as Chairman of Direct-to-Shopper for Disney Leisure.
Disney’s reward for Anand is surprisingly, given how in a different way it seen the corporate he was main lower than a yr in the past. In September 2025, Disney despatched a stop and desist letter to Character.AI, claiming the platform supplied chatbots primarily based on its characters and that they had been dangerous for youngsters. Character.AI had already been named in wrongful demise lawsuits involving a number of underage customers on the time, so Disney declare that the corporate’s merchandise had been “dangerous and harmful to kids” carried some weight.
In fact, one might assume Disney was much less nervous in regards to the unfavorable results of utilizing generative AI and extra involved that it wasn’t minimize in appropriately. The corporate did comply with license Disney characters to OpenAI for its failed Sora app only some months later in December 2025. If the corporate really believes AI is a part of its future, Anand’s expertise is far more necessary than any misgivings it had about Character.AI.
