The Walt Disney Company is using AI to determine how much consultation savor every single moment of their films .

At IEEE ’s Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition last weekend , Disney Research and Caltech explain their proficiency for tracking the facial expression of masses watching movies .

The inquiry team calls their new algorithm “ factorize variational autoencoders ” ( FVAEs ) . They exact the technology is so effective at tell apart complex expressions that , after analyse a individual audience member ’s face for about ten minute , it can even foretell that cheek ’s future manifestation throughout the remainder of a film .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

In rescript to build up a dataset of millions of facial landmarks to eat into a neural internet , researchers used infrared cameras to shoot the hearing of 150 display of nine flick , including recent Disney films Star Wars : The Force Awaken , Zootopia , Inside Out , and Big Hero 6 .

The result AI system was then tested on other consultation . After it tracked moviegoers ’ facial reaction design for a few minutes , FVAEs were then able-bodied to foretell when they would smile or laugh ( as bind to significant moments in the picture ) , outperforming other methods of prognostic psychoanalysis given far more data . As research progresses , FVAEs could also presumptively track other emotion like fear and sorrowfulness .

Disney is n’t the only plastic film company that wants to well understand how viewer react to movies . Over the last five yr , Dolby Laboratories has been studying movie watcherson a neurophysiological stratum , strapping biosensors onto volunteers to track their reaction as they experience pic . The company does these tests to prove that their audio and optical technology can elicit strong responses than their competitor .

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But it will be interesting to see how Disney , the world ’s secondly - largest media conglomerate , practice the information they collect from tracking audiences faces , as this AI facial tracking system could help them understand audience reactions much better than human market researchers . “ understand human behavior is key to explicate AI systems that march greater behavioural and societal word , ” tell Caltech machine learning prof Yison Yue in a wardrobe statement . “ After all , people do n’t always explicitly say that they are dysphoric or have some trouble . ”

Critics , actors , and directorsalready complainthat the demand of Hollywood studio are plunder directors of their creative control . Imagine what the product and editing mental process will be like once executives can utilize AI to insure each conniption evokes the appropriate response .

[ Caltech , Disney Research , Tech Crunch ]

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