Disney patents AI characters that pause and react when you interrupt them
Disney has filed a patent for a method where an AI character detects when a human or another AI interrupts its speech. The system uses machine learning to classify the interruption and decides whether to pause, change, or stop talking based on the context and importance of the conversation.
In the filing’s own words
There is provided a method that includes detecting, during a conversational turn by a first AI character in interaction with one of a human or a second AI character, sound produced by the human or the second AI character, classifying, using an ML model trained to detect an interruption to a conversation, the sound as an interruption to the interaction, identifying a response strategy for continuing the interaction based on one or more of (a) context of the interaction with the at least one of the human speaker or the second AI character, (b) a predicted importance of the conversational turn, or (c) a predicted importance of the interruption, and executing the response strategy by controlling playback of previously generated speech output of the first AI character based on a current playback position when the interruption is detected, controlling playback includes resuming, modifying, or terminating the previously generated speech output.
What exactly they claim (claim 1)
1 - 20. (canceled)
Facts
- Company
- Disney (Disney Enterprises, Inc.)
- Official title
- Interruption Response by an Artificial Intelligence Character
- Publication number
- US20260290345A1
- Application number
- 19692521
- Filed
- May 29, 2026
- Published
- Sep 24, 2026
- Inventors
- 5
- Claims
- 21
Classified under
G10L 15/222 Physics & computingG06N 3/006 Physics & computingG06N 3/0455 Physics & computingG10L 13/10 Physics & computingG10L 15/1807 Physics & computingMore from Disney in AI & software
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Summaries are simplified from the filing’s own abstract and first claim. A patent filing is not a product announcement.
Patent data and drawings: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nebula is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.