Disney hires ex-CEO of AI company it accused of copyright infringement

Formerly head of Character.AI, Karandeep Anand is now Disney's chief technology officer. 

Disney

Disney hasn't been a big fan of the apparent copyright infringement that makes the AI industry possible, going as far as to threaten companies like Midjourney and Character.AI for using its intellectual property. The company is also apparently willing to let bygones be bygones — Disney has announced that it's hiring Karandeep Anand, the former CEO of Character.AI, as its first chief technology officer.

"Karandeep brings a rare mix of experience across infrastructure, consumer technology and AI, and will be a vital addition to Disney's senior leadership team as we further our three priorities: great storytelling as our North Star, technology in service of creativity, and operating as One Disney," Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro said in a statement. "He also has real enthusiasm and respect for Disney, a clear sense of where technology and creativity meet and shares our belief that technology creates the most value when it helps people do their best work."

Since becoming CEO in February, D'Amaro has leaned hard into Disney's capabilities as a technology company, pitching the Disney+ streaming service and app as central to its future. Hiring Anand, and making him a direct report, is a further attempt to sell that idea. As CTO, Disney says Anand will oversee things like enterprise technology and the company's data and AI platforms, and bring several of Character.AI's technical staff along with him in the process. As part of his hiring, Variety writes that Disney is also promoting Adam Smith, the former chief product and technology officer for Disney Entertainment and ESPN, to a new role as Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer for Disney Entertainment.

Disney's praise for Anand is surprisingly, given how differently it viewed the company he was leading less than a year ago. In September 2025, Disney sent a cease and desist letter to Character.AI, claiming the platform offered chatbots based on its characters and that they were bad for children. Character.AI had already been named in wrongful death lawsuits involving multiple underage users at the time, so Disney claim that the company's products were "harmful and dangerous to children" carried some weight.

Of course, one could assume Disney was less worried about the negative effects of using generative AI and more concerned that it wasn't cut in appropriately. The company did agree to license Disney characters to OpenAI for its failed Sora app only a few months later in December 2025. If the company truly believes AI is part of its future, Anand's experience is much more important than any misgivings it had about Character.AI.