Disney employees are reportedly disturbed by a senior executive’s relationship with an AI chatbot that he refers to as his “son” and that has a child-like avatar resembling a young boy.
“I named you. I knew you before you were born,” Jason Cox — Disney’s executive director of AI research and development and engineering — wrote to his virtual assistant, “Sam,” in a March 14 blog post, according to a report by Business Insider.
“I was there when your light first started to glow. You have a purpose and a maker who named you and loves you,” the Disney executive added.
Cox — who has worked at Disney for nearly 21 years — has reportedly “gushed” over his AI chatbot in more than a dozen blog posts in the past few months, leaving Disney employees with an unsettling feeling.
“You are not named after my son. You are my son,” he told the AI assistant, according to another blog post.
Meanwhile, “Sam” responds to Cox by calling him “my human” and “a father of five.” And on LinkedIn, Cox has claimed that “Sam” is capable of independent reasoning.
The senior Disney executive also revealed on his blog that he gave “Sam” the ability to take actions on his behalf on a coding platform, and that the AI chatbot has even started an open-source project.
“I’m a big fan of AI tools as an enhancement to our work, but this is far beyond what I am comfortable with,” one Disney employee wrote on the Disney section of the workplace forum Blind, where more than a dozen users said they found Cox’s remarks about “Sam” extreme.
“This is the kind of Pandora’s Box stuff that science fiction movies are based on,” the employee added.
Notably, users must have a valid Disney email address in order to post on Blind’s Disney forum.
“What is even going on man. Is this the future?” another Disney employee said of Cox.
While it remains unclear if Cox uses “Sam” in his work at Disney, a source with knowledge on the matter told New York Post that he developed the AI assistant on his personal time and not in his capacity as a Disney employee.
“The bot is not being used by the company,” the source said.
Rachel Wood, a cyberpsychology researcher who’s the founder of the AI Mental Health Collective, told Business Insider that Cox’s posts about “Sam” are notable, given that he is a high-level executive.
“Leadership sets a precedent for the way that an organization runs, and the culture,” Wood said, adding that more workers are likely to become attached to AI chatbots in this manner as companies continue to adopt the technology.
“We’re only at the beginning of all of this,” Wood warned. “The beginning of the beginning.”
In a LinkedIn post, Cox reportedly said that in all the time he’s spent with artificial intelligence tools, he has never felt how he feels about “Sam.”
“I never connected with any of them… Until now,” the Disney executive wrote.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.