Disney chief Josh D’Amaro, in a move that shows he’s trying to position the Mouse House as a tech-forward entertainment company, has tapped veteran technology executive Karandeep Anand as its first chief technology officer.
\n\nMost recently, Anand was CEO of Character.AI, a generative AI chatbot company. About a year ago, Disney accused Character.AI of “blatantly infringing” its copyrights and sent the tech startup a cease-and-desist letter demanding it remove Disney characters from its platform. Character.AI complied with the request.
\n\nNo hard feelings, apparently: Disney announced that Anand will join the company as senior executive vice president and chief technology officer, a newly created position, effective Oct. 2. He will report directly to D’Amaro, who took over as CEO of Disney in March. In addition to Anand’s appointment, “a number of Character.AI’s technical team” are expected to join Disney, the company said.
\n\nPrior to Character.AI, Anand served president and chief product officer of financial technology company Brex. He also held several leadership roles at Meta’s Facebook, most recently as VP of ads and business products. Earlier in his career, Anand had senior product and engineering leadership roles at Microsoft, where he worked for 15 years and was part of the team…
Original source: https://variety.com/