Disney Imagineering Debuts Next-Generation Robotic Character, Olaf

Re:Disney Imagineering Debuts Next-Generation Robotic Charac... by yjftsjthsd-h on Sunday December 21, 2025 @10:35PM (#46351040)

That's interesting; if you're doing human in the loop, I would have thought it'd be easier to just do voice swapping. Or did the technology not quite line up?

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Re:Disney Imagineering Debuts Next-Generation Robotic Charac... by pfych on Sunday December 21, 2025 @11:07PM (#46351213)

Someones linked in this thread the Defunctland video essay on these characters that I highly recommend watching since it goes into this in detail.

But the main reason is, there's a lot of brand imagery on the line with these interactions, someone putting on a voice, or using a voice changer could make a mistake. Disney instead have a conversation tree with pre-recorded voice lines that a remote operator can control. Much harder to mess up

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Re:Disney Imagineering Debuts Next-Generation Robotic Charac... by dotancohen on Sunday December 21, 2025 @11:50PM (#46351409)

And possibly more importantly, much easier to keep doing for hours on end. There's no need for a highly trained actor.

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