Disney+ will soon incorporate polarizing technology on its service, a controversial decision that will spark debate in Hollywood.
On Thursday, Disney held its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings conference call. Disney CEO Bob Iger reported the company’s earnings and touted the company’s highlights from the past year. More importantly, Iger mentioned that Disney+ is due for a major change involving AI, a hot-button topic in the entertainment business.
“Disney+ is in the midst of rolling out the biggest and the most significant changes — from a product perspective, from a technology perspective — since we launched the service in 2019,” Iger said on Thursday via The Hollywood Reporter.
What is the controversial decision involving Disney+ and AI?
Iger announced that the company is working to allow Gen-AI short-form user-generated content (UGC) on Disney+.
“The other thing that we’re really excited about, that AI is going to give us the ability to do, is to provide users of Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user-generated content and to consume user generated content — mostly short-form — from others,” Iger explained.
Short-form UGC featuring recognizable IP is currently sweeping the internet on Sora. Developed by OpenAI, Sora is a social media app that generates short videos based on prompts. Iger didn’t mention Sora on the call, but Disney’s plans mimic the app’s capabilities.
Iger’s comments are surprising because of the company’s previous stance on AI. In June, Disney and Universal sued Midjourney, an AI platform, for copyright infringement over the use of their characters in AI-generated videos.
Iger later mentioned that Disney has conducted “productive conversations” with AI companies, with the hope being that the company can “protect the IP.”
Iger did not mention when these changes would be implemented on Disney+.
