Disney’s Chief Legal Officer has seemingly confirmed more layoffs are coming to the company, implying AI is taking over jobs.
Disney Layoffs
Horacio Gutierrez, Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Legal and Global Affairs Officer, The Walt Disney Company, sent a memo on September 18 to his LGA department of just under 1,000 employees stating a “transformation” process is underway including “automating certain workflows by leveraging the latest technologies,” according to Deadline.
The memo then circulated among Disney departments and the entertainment law community.
The memo seems to confirm rumors of layoffs, which are expected to affect H.R., product and technology, and other operations functions. With the message sent to LGA staffers, they fear it may apply to them as well.
Deadline reports unspecified cuts within the LGA department are not connected to the next round of layoffs, which is expected to begin as early as next week.
Gutierrez added that Disney’s “legal, government relations, operations, and others, are going through their own reinvention as technology reshapes how work gets done, and the operating models that underpin those professions. He said he’s “taking a dispassionate look at every aspect of how we do our work, so we can do it in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.”
“Obviously, this will require hard choices about where and how we deploy our resources and investments, including our staffing investments and how we work will look different in the months and years ahead,” Gutierrez went on, “LGA will be a much smaller organization than it is today, and some of you will personally be affected by decisions we make in this process. As a result, we’ll have to consider a whole range of new models for different workloads, including automating certain workflows by leveraging the latest technologies, moving to self-service models where appropriate, engaging alternative legal providers and others, and new expanded share services, even outsourcing.”
Gutierrez continued, “when teams work smarter, Disney can serve more fans at lower costs, freeing up capital to reinvest in the content, guest experiences, and technology infrastructure that keep the company out in front.”
Referencing CEO Josh D’Amaro, he concluded, “Josh’s vision is of a Disney that succeeds in a changing market by breaking internal walls and embracing technology to amplify what makes it great, not by clinging to the way things always have been done.”
The memo came on the day Disney announced the hiring of their first Chief Technology Officer, Karandeep Anand, former CEO of Character.AI.
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