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Jon Snoddy is the CEO of Operative Games and a veteran storyteller with a career spanning NPR, Lucasfilm, Disney Imagineering and a co-venture with Spielberg and Sega. Recorded live from the floor of HumanX 2026, this lightning round explores what happens when you combine Disney-level character craft with large language models to create a completely new kind of interactive storytelling.
Jon and host Dan Turchin dig into how Operative builds AI-powered characters that feel emotionally real, what the entertainment industry gets wrong about the AI disruption, and why small studios have an edge that no major franchise can buy.
What You'll Learn
• How Jon went from Disney Imagineering to building AI characters you can call on the phone • Why emotional fidelity matters more than photorealism in AI-driven storytelling • How Operative thinks about guardrails, ethics and responsible AI in immersive entertainment • What the Pixar disruption can and cannot teach us about the AI moment in entertainment • Why big studios are watching but not moving, and why that's an opportunity for startups
🎙️ Part of our HumanX 2026 compilation series. Listen to the full compilation here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/520474/episodes/19257142
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