Not content with mere costumed characters, Walt Disney Imagineering has, it seems, decided to dial up the ‘uncanny’ factor to eleven, handing Olaf, everyone’s favourite sentient snowman, an AI upgrade powered by the dark arts of deep reinforcement learning. This isn’t some bloke sweltering in a dodgy suit or a remote-controlled contraption; oh no, this is a bona fide, free-roaming, conversational robot, meticulously engineered to be the spitting image of its animated self. And yes, it even boasts a removable carrot nose, because details, darling, details. So, if you fancy having your mind properly boggled, get yourselves down to Disneyland Paris or Hong Kong Disneyland. Because, folks, the once-clear distinction between a beloved cartoon character and a fully autonomous, slightly-too-real machine has, quite frankly, gone up in a puff of digital smoke.
