Who Will Build the Next Disney? Ankiti Bose of Terra Invest on AI and Worlds That Remember

I think AI could enable an entertainment company whose central creation is a world that remembers you. You might first encounter it through a film, return through an interactive story and later attend an event with other people who inhabit the same fictional universe. Each experience could deepen a relationship that continues across formats.

At Terra Invest, that possibility interests me because it changes what a creator can build. A strong character or imagined world could become the foundation for a much larger body of work without requiring every scene and interaction to be produced separately from the beginning. The next Disney-scale ambition could originate with a founder who has a distinctive creative vision and access to tools that previously required an enormous organisation.

The technical challenge is continuity. A character should remember an encounter, remain faithful to its motives and understand which events have happened. Objects should persist. Actions should have consequences. These requirements turn an impressive demonstration into a demanding systems problem, because the world must remain coherent even when a visitor behaves in an unexpected way.

Google DeepMind’s August 2025 Genie 3 announcement offered an early glimpse of responsive generation: navigable environments at 24 frames per second and 720p, retaining consistency for a few minutes. A persistent fictional universe requires much more. I regard the demonstration as evidence that the creative surface is beginning to change, with the enduring experience still to be built around it.

My expectation is that the most compelling products will keep a reliable underlying record of their world. Generative models can supply dialogue, images and local interactions, while that record preserves identities, histories and consequential events. Creators must decide how changes enter the record and which events are shared across the audience. A world needs an editorial constitution as well as a rendering system.

That creates fascinating work for writers. They could define what a character wants, what it will never do and how it changes after particular experiences. They could build circumstances in which an audience’s choices have emotional weight. A compelling character may disappoint or resist the participant. The creative discipline lies in making that resistance meaningful and faithful to the story.

Common experiences will also become more valuable as personal generation becomes easier. People want things to talk about with other people. A franchise can offer a shared history and major events while leaving room for individual journeys. If everything changes for every visitor, the creation risks losing the references that make a culture form around it. Protecting those references is a strategic choice for the people building the world.

The commercial advantage could then move towards accumulated attachment. Many companies may be able to generate a beautiful scene. Fewer will own a fictional universe that people have explored for years, introduced to friends and made part of their lives. Improvements in the underlying models could strengthen that universe while leaving its creative identity and audience relationship with the company that built them.

Creators across the Middle East have an extraordinary range of places, histories and social experiences from which to build, and languages spoken far beyond the region. AI-assisted translation can help that specificity travel. YouTube’s December 2024 introduction of auto dubbing described translated audio with creator review, a practical example of one distribution barrier becoming easier to address. The opportunity I see extends to original worlds that reach global audiences without first sanding away their local character.

The work will also require clear arrangements with performers, writers and other contributors. An interactive character may be used across many situations that its creators never individually scripted. Creative authority, permitted uses and compensation should be designed into the business from the beginning. Audiences will care whether the result feels deliberate and whether the people who gave it its character can continue shaping it.

AI can help a small team demonstrate an idea, learn how an audience responds and expand the work. Building a lasting entertainment company still requires taste, distribution and sustained authorship. Those are exciting problems to tackle when the initial means of production become more accessible.

The opportunity is to create places people want to return to. Some will begin as films, some as games and some in forms we have not yet named. I expect the next generation of great entertainment companies to give audiences more ways to belong to the worlds they love.