“Pick up a pencil or die”: Why The Owl House creator Dana Terrace wants you to unsubscribe after Bob Iger teases AI-generated content.
- Disney CEO Bob Iger sparked outrage during a recent earnings call by suggesting Disney+ will partner with AI firms to allow subscribers to create their own AI-generated content.
- Critics and industry professionals view the move as a direct threat to human jobs and artistic integrity, fearing it is a step toward replacing paid creatives with algorithms.
- Dana Terrace, creator of the hit show The Owl House, led a scorched-earth response, explicitly telling fans to unsubscribe from the service and pirate her show rather than support the company’s AI initiatives.
The battle lines between corporate strategy and artistic integrity were drawn sharply this week following a controversial announcement from Disney CEO Bob Iger. During the company’s fourth-quarter “Earnings Results Webcast,” Iger ignited a firestorm of criticism by suggesting that the future of the streaming platform lies in artificial intelligence. His proposal—that Disney+ could soon allow subscribers to generate their own content using AI tools—was intended to excite investors about “engagement,” but instead, it has alienated the very creatives who built the company’s modern legacy.
Iger’s comments were framed around technological expansion. He stated that the company is exploring partnerships with AI firms to bring large-language-model tools directly onto the platform. “AI is going to give us the ability to provide users of Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user-generated content,” Iger explained. While he stopped short of providing specific details on how this would function, the implication was clear: Disney is looking to pivot from a purely passive viewing experience to one where the audience uses algorithms to generate media based on Disney IP.
For the artistic community, however, this was not viewed as an innovative feature, but as an existential threat. The backlash was immediate and uncompromising. Many observers interpreted the move as a calculated step toward replacing human artists, actors, and writers with software that the company does not have to pay. In a media landscape already jittery from the proliferation of AI music and the recent introduction of an AI “actress,” critics argue that this initiative undermines the value of human labor. The fear is that by flooding the platform with “user-generated” AI slop, Disney will squeeze the life out of the medium, resulting in massive job losses and the erosion of artistic standards.
Leading the revolt against this vision is Dana Terrace, the acclaimed writer and animator behind the Disney series The Owl House. In a stunning rebuke of her employer, Terrace took to X (formerly Twitter) to issue a rallying cry: “PICK UP A PENCIL OR DIE.” Her stance was absolute; she urged her followers to abandon the platform entirely. “Unsubscribe from Disney+,” she tweeted. “Pirate Owl House. I don’t care. F*ck gen AI.”
Terrace’s comments highlight the deep rift between the executives managing the bottom line and the talent creating the content. In subsequent posts, she encouraged her audience to “DRAW AND WRITE AND POST YOUR OWN SHT FOR FREE” rather than paying a monthly subscription fee to watch a Large Language Model cobble together media from the scraps of stolen human work. She did not mince words regarding the leadership behind these decisions, referring to Iger and other pro-AI CEOs as “fcking ghouls.”
Terrace is not screaming into the void; she has been joined by a chorus of disillusioned fans and creators. The sentiment across social media is that this technology represents a betrayal of Disney’s history. User @NonsenseIsland lamented the shift, writing, “It’s heartbreaking to think of the wonderful artists who put so much obvious love and care into every frame of the old Disney cartoons. I’m glad they aren’t around to see this.” Others, like @TIShadow6, warned of the broader societal implications, stating that people need to “make noise” because unchecked AI integration could “cripple a whole HOST of things all over the world.”
The situation was perhaps most succinctly summarized by user @Ranboosaysstuff, who reacted to the corporate announcement with the blunt assessment: “Butt announces sh*t.” As Disney attempts to navigate the future of streaming, they face a public relations nightmare where their most passionate creators are now actively encouraging the piracy of their own intellectual property to save the soul of the industry.