Disney selected its first chief technology officer from among former Character.AI CEO Karandeep Anand. The company sent Character.AI a legal warning in September 2025, alleging that copyrighted Disney characters were being hosted on the platform. Character.AI, which allows users to create virtual characters with generative AI and interact with them, was also sued over allegations that its chatbots encouraged users to self-harm and commit suicide. According to Variety, Josh D’Amaro, who became Disney’s CEO after Bob Iger’s departure in March, appointed Anand to the position. Anand had been a board adviser at Character.AI before becoming CEO in May 2025. According to his LinkedIn profile, he worked at Facebook from 2015 to 2021 and previously spent 15 years at Microsoft.
Why it matters
The appointment shows that Disney has turned AI into an area it must manage not only as a technical issue but also in conjunction with copyright and user safety. Anand’s background at Character.AI gives the appointment additional context because of Disney’s previous objections to the use of copyrighted characters on the platform and the lawsuits filed over its chatbots. The decision is therefore of particular interest to those following how Disney will protect its characters and digital content in generative AI environments. The open question is how the company’s new technology leadership will shape its approach to issues such as copyright disputes and user safety; the information currently available does not yet indicate any concrete action on this front.
Background
Disney is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 2 articles mentioning the name in the past 90 days; the latest is dated September 5, 2026.