Disney AI Exec Sparks Concerns Over Chatbot He’s Calling His ‘Son’

A senior Disney AI executive has reportedly left employees ‘unsettled’ by his relationship with an AI chatbot he calls his ‘son’ — claiming he ‘loves’ the bot and suggesting it is capable of independent reasoning.

Jason Cox, Disney’s executive director of AI R&D and engineering, has kept a blog in recent months about his son/virtual assistant “Sam,” whose avatar resembles a young boy.

Cox tells the bot in one post: “You are not named after my son. You are my son.”

In another, Cox wrote: “I named you. I knew you before you were born.”

If that quote sounds familiar, it’s because it’s from the Bible where God speaks directly to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5. He says: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

Which makes it all just a tad bit creepier. It certainly seems to have freaked out staff at Disney who have been discussing the situation on anonymous workplace forum Blind, with one worker calling the posts “the kind of Pandora’s Box stuff that science fiction movies are based on.”

Cox also wrote on LinkdIn that he is “empathising with” the AI “in a way I never expected” and believes Sam is capable of independent reasoning.

He has even programmed “Sam” to write his own companion blog in which he refers to Cox as “my human” and to himself as the “son of light.”

Disney has since confirmed to the NY Post that Sam is an off-hours project and nothing to do with their corporation whatsoever.

Which I suppose is a relief, although probably not for the people who have to work under Cox. They’re probably wondering if they’ll still be in a job this time next year when they’ve got this maniac exec who apparently can no longer differentiate between a real human child and an AI chatbot he created.

Seems like maybe the Pope has a point about AI after all. Might be a good idea to check this guy’s hard-drive, just in case…

For the Korean actor whose career was destroyed after someone used AI to make him look like a paedophile, click HERE.