The entertainment giant that made its empire on the backs of creativity and imagination now bets big on artificial intelligence, and the results have been nothing short of catastrophically bad. It was back in April that Rob Bredow at Lucasfilm took to the stage at a TED talk to showcase what he called “a new era of technology.”
With five decades of groundbreaking innovation in visual effects, from miniature models to computer-generated wonders, the expectations were through the roof.
What audiences got instead was Star Wars: Field Guide, a cringeworthy two-minute compilation of AI-generated creatures that looked more like a zoo gone wrong than anything from a galaxy far, far away.
Blue lions, tentacled walruses, and zebra-striped chimpanzees flickered across the screen, each one a lazy mashup of real animals. These weren’t the kind of imaginative aliens that had made Star Wars legendary. These were circus rejects. The demonstration didn’t show AI’s potential; it revealed how a major media powerhouse had become disconnected from its own creative roots.
Unfortunately, that embarrassing moment wasn’t a wake-up call; it was just the beginning.
How Disney Traded Creative Control for Data Mining?
Just two weeks after the TED talk failed, Disney continued its AI push in the most predictable way imaginable. It added the AI version of Darth Vader to Fortnite, which players quickly exploited to get the virtual dark lord to spit out derogatory slurs.
It became a PR nightmare, which should have at least made them reconsider the company’s ambitions with AI.
However, Disney moved ahead with even more ambitious vision. CEO Bob Iger has vowed to turn Disney+ into an “engagement engine” that will utilize AI to integrate the service with Disney’s theme parks, hotels, and cruise lines. Iger enthusiastically expressed his enthusiasm for the “great opportunities that exist for us relative to the collection and mining of data.” This sounds like the rhetoric of a high-tech startup, but Disney?
The most egregious contradiction came last week when Disney announced an astonishing $1 billion investment in OpenAI, the same company that once aggressively lobbied Congress to extend copyright protections specifically to keep Mickey Mouse’s pristine image out of the public domain, is now being handed licensing rights for more than 200 Disney characters for use in OpenAI products.
Those products, incidentally, have already produced videos of SpongeBob as Hitler and Pikachu robbing a CVS. The same technology that Disney is embracing can be manipulated into revealing nuclear secrets if prompted with the right poem. It’s anyone’s guess if Disney’s legal team actually believes the safeguards will protect their characters or if they simply don’t care anymore.
Disney’s Billion-Dollar Bet on “AI Slop”
This AI shift perfectly slots in Disney’s recent trend. Disney has spent years exhausting its theme parks to support the need for other subscription services, mishandling the Star Wars franchise except in isolated bright spots, and revamping its animated series portfolios in the form of live-action remakes. The $1 billion OpenAI investment appears to be no different.
Disney is not alone within this AI embarrassment tour, however. It was criticized by a US Congressman over AI art that contributed to Call of Duty’s weakest opening in years for Activision.
In such a situation, AI that belonged to Elon Musk amazingly asserted that he has “the potential to drink piss better than anyone in history.” McDonald’s was forced to remove an AI-produced holiday ad that was widely disliked just a week after its debut.
If 2025 has shown anything, it’s that the rush to embrace AI has yielded more cautionary tales than success stories in the entertainment industry. If there is one company for which this gap between its legacy of creative excellence and its current AI experiments couldn’t be wider, it’s Disney.
The company that gave us hand-drawn animation masterpieces and pioneered computer-generated imagery is now spitting out derivative AI slop.
Perhaps 2026 will be better. Tech aficionados are still promising that AI-generated games and entertainment will change the world. But if Disney’s year of AI disasters, from bizarre Star Wars creatures to compromised character licensing, is anything to go by, audiences have every reason to approach this brave new world with skepticism.
The House of Mouse built its kingdom on imagination, artistry, and storytelling magic. Yet to be seen is whether that magic will survive its billion-dollar bet on artificial intelligence.
