Walt Disney sets up AI & augmented reality-focused group

Founded over a century ago as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, The Walt Disney Company is now a multinational conglomerate with involvement in multiple areas of the entertainment realm. With an impressive number of 225,000 employees, Disney had a revenue of almost $90 billion and a net income of over $2.35 billion in 2023. Now, they are taking one step further by setting up a group that will focus on emerging technologies such as AI and mixed reality.

According to an exclusive report by Reuters, "the media giant explores applications across its film, television, and theme park divisions," and it's no surprise that the new unit will be led by Jamie Voris. Voris, previous Disney's COT in charge of the app for the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset. The new group is labeled "Office of Technology Enablement" and, while it launches with a core leadership team, should reach about 100 people soon enough, according to an insider familiar with Disney's inner workings.

While various Disney divisions have been working with both AI and augmented reality for a while, the new group will focus exclusively on such technologies. For example, an area with a lot of room for improvement involves providing augmented reality experiences in the theme parks and even in the consumers' homes thanks to the new generation of lightweight glasses recently unveiled by Meta and Snap. 

This year, the market for AR/VR headsets reached 1.7 million units sold, with over 60% coming from Meta. The list of competitors includes Sony, Apple, and ByteDance, the company behind TikTok.

The Meta Quest 3S 128 GB with Batman: Arkham Shadow and 3-month trial of Meta Quest+ is currently Amazon's best-seller in the Standalone Virtual Reality Headsets category, with over 10,000 units sold in the last month. The current price is $299, with free delivery and free returns included.