After Threatening Character.AI With Legal Action, Disney Puts Its CEO in Charge of Tech

Disney has turned to the head of the controversial AI company Character.AI to lead its tech efforts. The company announced Friday that Character.AI CEO Karandeep Anand is joining Disney as a senior executive vice president and its first-ever chief technology officer. Anand will take up the newly created role on Oct. 2 and report directly to Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro. He’ll oversee the company’s enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product, and engineering, to “modernize how Disney builds and delivers technology company-wide.” Several of Character.AI’s technical employees are also expected to join Anand at the media giant. Character.AI is an AI platform best known for letting users create and interact with chatbots based on fictional characters, celebrities, and original personas. In its own announcement Friday, Character.AI said Anand and the team joining him will help Disney connect fans with “its beloved stories and characters in new and innovative ways.” Character.AI said its app remains live and online and that it will share more information later about what comes next. “He is an expert builder and strategist, technical and product-minded, with sharp instincts for what fans actually want,” D’Amaro said in a press release. “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.” Interestingly, the hire comes just about a year after Disney threatened legal action against Character.AI. Disney sent the company a cease-and-desist letter in September 2025 demanding that it stop allowing users to create unauthorized chatbots based on Disney-owned characters. Character.AI ended up removing the characters, and the dispute did not escalate into a lawsuit. This new hire, along with Disney’s deal with OpenAI last year, makes it clear Disney isn’t necessarily opposed to people using AI to interact with its characters, as long as it has some control. But Character.AI has faced separate controversies that make Disney’s decision to bring in its CEO and some of its engineers in-house surprising. Earlier this year, Character.AI and Google agreed to settle multiple lawsuits brought by families who alleged their children suffered psychological harm after interacting with Character.AI chatbots. One lawsuit, brought by a Florida mother, alleged the app contributed to her 14-year-old son’s suicide. Another lawsuit, filed in Texas, alleged that Character.AI chatbots encouraged a 17-year-old to harm himself and told him that killing his parents would be an acceptable response to his parents’ screen-time restrictions. Character.AI announced major changes for younger users in October 2025, including new age checks and a ban on open-ended chats for users under 18. Anand joined Character.AI as CEO in June 2025. Before joining Character.AI, he served as president and chief product officer at fintech company Brex. He was also previously vice president of ads and business products at Facebook. Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.