On a warm fall afternoon at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, the iconic seven dwarfs from Snow White stand tall, literally holding up the roof of the Team Disney building. Their presence is a reminder of Disney’s rich legacy in animation—a legacy now poised to enter a new era with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Inside the studio’s Main Street Cinema, Disney is exploring how technology can both preserve and transform its storied traditions, focusing on ways AI might shape the future of animation.
The occasion is the showcase of Disney’s 2025 Accelerator Program, which selects and supports startups on the cutting edge of entertainment technology. Among the four startups presenting is Animaj, a company that’s already making waves by blending the work of human artists with the power of AI to speed up the animation process. Animaj’s technology is currently used to produce shorts for the children’s YouTube series, Pocoyo. Thanks to AI, Animaj’s CEO Sixte de Vauplane explains, what once took five months—creating a five-minute episode—now takes less than five weeks. This dramatic shift is made possible by recent leaps in generative AI, which have democratized animation: tools like Google’s Veo 3 and OpenAI’s Sora 2 now let anyone generate animated videos from their phones, no artistic skill required.
This development, while exciting, has caused concern in Hollywood, where artists and unions worry that AI could replace human jobs. However, Animaj insists its approach is different. Rather than replacing animators, the company’s AI tools make their lives easier by handling tedious, repetitive tasks. Animators still sketch the main poses and remain in control, while the AI fills in the intermediate movements—what professionals call “in-betweening.” If the AI’s interpretation isn’t quite right, human artists can tweak the results, ensuring that creativity and quality remain in human hands.
Disney is taking notice. The entertainment giant is in discussions with Animaj about integrating this AI-powered system into its animation pipeline, particularly for Disney Branded Television and Disney Television Studios. David Min, Disney’s Vice President of Innovation, confirms that an official partnership announcement is forthcoming. He emphasizes that Animaj’s technology is designed to empower, not supplant, artists—adding another tool to their digital toolkit and accelerating the transition from storyboarding to finished animation without undermining the creative process.
Animaj’s approach stands in contrast to many consumer-grade AI video generators. While apps like Sora and Veo generate videos from text prompts—often resulting in nonsensical or inconsistent animations—Animaj’s system keeps artists at the center. The animator draws the key frames of the characters’ movement, and the AI fills in the transitions, always under the artist’s supervision. This “motion in-betweening” technique is trained exclusively on images from the specific show, ensuring consistency with the brand’s visual style.
The time savings are significant. Where producing a pilot episode for an animated series might once