Yet speakers at the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference on Tuesday warned against getting too dazzled by the acrobatic feats. A robot doing a backflip–something difficult for a person–looks impressive. But ask a robot to perform seemingly easy tasks, say, climbing up stairs or grabbing a glass of water, and many of todays droids still struggle.

“What looks hard is easy, but what looks easy is really hard,” Stephanie Zhan, a partner at Sequoia Capital, explained, paraphrasing an observation from computer scientist Hans Moravec. In the late Eighties, Moravec and other computer scientists noted that it was easier for computers to perform well on tests of intelligence, yet failed at tasks that even young children could do.

Deepak Pathak, CEO of robotics startup Skild AI, explained that robots, and computers in general, were good at doing complex tasks when operating in a controlled environment. Showing a video of a Skild robot skipping down a sidewalk, Pathak noted that “apart from the ground, the robot is not interacting with anything.”

Yet for tasks like picking up a bottle or walking up stairs, a person is using vision to “continuously correct” what he or she is doing, Pathak explains. “That interaction is the root reason for human general intelligence, which you don’t appreciate because almost every human has it.”

Zhan explained that viral videos of humanoid robots don’t show how the product was trained, nor whether it can operate in an uncontrolled environment. “The challenge for you as a consumer of all these videos is to really discern what’s real and what’s not,” she said.

The next step for robots

Still, both speakers were optimistic that advances in general intelligence will soon lead to more advanced and flexible robots.

“Robots used to be driven more by human intelligence. Somebody super smart would look at [a task], and…pre-program the robot mathematically to do it,” Pathak said. 

But now, the robotics field is shifting from “programming something to learning from experience,” he explained. This allows for new robots that handle more complex tasks in more uncontrolled environments, and which can easily be adapted for other tasks without the cost of reprogramming and retooling them. 

Today’s robotics firms are “still constrained by having robots that are only built for specific things,” Zhan argued. A robotics platform with more general intelligence can open up “possibilities that are otherwise not possible for us to achieve,” including tasks that are currently dangerous for human workers.

Consumers could benefit too. “You see all these household robots, but they’re only capable of doing one thing,” Zhan said. “But if we succeed at building general intelligent robots, you will finally have consumer robots that can tackle the whole host of household tasks that you now have.” A similar point was made earlier at Brainstorm AI by Qualcomm CEO Rene Haas, who said that the general adaptability of humanoid robots will make them much better suited for factory jobs than the robotics arms used today.

There are social repercussions to a robotics boom, dislodging jobs that, as of now, still needed to be done by humans. Yet Pathak was sanguine about the social benefits of spreading automation. One is safety, as robots remove the need for humans to do jobs that are hazardous or unhealthy in the long-run. Another benefit is filling the massive labor shortage for blue-collar and manufacturing jobs. (That shortfall has been a barrier to U.S. efforts to re-shore much of its advanced manufacturing from Asian economies.)

Yet Pathak also envisioned a future where robots free humans from the drudgery of everyday work, even as he admitted that societies needed to figure out how to spread the gains from automation. “There lies a scenario, a good scenario, where everybody is doing things that they like,” Pathak said. “Work is more optional, and they are doing things that they enjoy.”

The deal, which brings Disney’s intellectual property to OpenAI’s video generation platform Sora, is structured to balance “aggressive” intellectual property protection with a willingness to embrace inevitable technological disruption, Iger said. Under the terms of the three-year agreement, Disney will license approximately 200 characters for use within Sora, allowing users to create short-form videos featuring iconic figures ranging from Mickey Mouse to Star Wars personalities.

Iger framed the partnership not as a concession to AI, but as a necessary evolution—and one that is actually good for human artists. This is because the deal does not include name and likeness, nor does it include character voices. “And so, in reality, this does not in any way represent a threat to the creators at all, in fact, the opposite. I think it honors them and respects them, in part because there’s a license fee associated with it.” Iger stressed repeatedly Disney wants to be on the cutting edge of how technology reinvents entertainment. “No human generation has ever stood in the way of technological advance, and we don’t intend to try.”

The partnership stands in stark contrast to Disney’s relationship with other tech giants. On the same day the OpenAI deal was announced, Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google regarding alleged misuse of IP. Iger explained the divergence in approach by noting that, unlike Google, OpenAI has agreed to “honor and value and respect” Disney’s content through a licensing fee and safety guardrails. “We have been aggressive at protecting our IP, and we have gone after other companies that have not honored our IP,” Iger said, adding conversations with Google had failed to “bear fruit.”

A win-win partnership?

For OpenAI, reportedly under pressure from the aforementioned Google—whose Gemini 3 has been hailed by AI luminaries such as Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff—the deal represents a validation of its generative video technology. Altman told CNBC user demand for Disney characters was “sort-of off the charts,” and he envisioned a future in which fans can generate custom content, such as a “Buzz Lightyear custom birthday video” or a personalized lightsaber scene. Altman argued the partnership would unlock “latent creativity” in the general public by lowering the skill and effort required to bring ideas to life.

The collaboration will also extend to Disney’s own streaming platform. Iger revealed plans to integrate “user prompted Sora-generated content” directly into Disney+. He said specifically Disney has “wanted for a long time to have what we will call user-generated content on our platform,” suggesting this partnership is a defensive move with regard to streaming giant YouTube and social media epicenter TikTok, which is partially under the control of the Ellison family that also controls entertainment rival Paramount.

The deal includes undisclosed warrants, giving Disney a financial stake in OpenAI’s success. Iger confirmed the warrants and declined to offer more specifics. He compared this forward-thinking approach to Disney’s 2005 decision to license shows to iTunes, viewing the OpenAI partnership as the modern equivalent of boarding a “profound wave” of societal change.

Iger revealed the groundwork for this deal was laid several years ago, saying he had first met Altman in 2022, when he was retired from Disney, before his comeback as CEO. Altman gave Iger a “bit of a road map” about where OpenAI was headed, and Disney has been “extremely impressed” with OpenAI’s growth since then, with all of Altman’s predictions from 2022 coming true a lot faster than either party realized. Iger added Disney sees great opportunities to license other product from OpenAI in the years ahead, which he sees being a huge push in “essentially accomplish[ing] a lot of what we feel we need to accomplish in the years ahead.”