Disney and Adobe announced a multiyear alliance on Monday, Nov. 9, at Adobe's MAX conference. The two companies have worked together for decades, and Adobe now becomes what they call an Official AI Innovation Partner of The Walt Disney Company. Adobe says it will give Disney early access to its newest AI and creative tools, along with its own engineers and researchers to support Disney's production work.
At the center of the deal is Firefly Foundry, an Adobe service through which a business works with Adobe to make AI models of its own. Adobe says Disney will work directly with Adobe on models given extra training on Disney's own material, from its characters' traits to the settings and visual styles of its stories. Adobe says such models can be built on top of its own Firefly models. It says the results are meant to be safe for Disney to use in paid work and good enough for finished projects. Adobe contrasts this with AI tools trained on material gathered from across the internet, which it says can't guarantee that a company's characters come out right or show where their results came from.
Disney's theme park designers already use such models. Adobe says Walt Disney Imagineering, the group that designs Disney's parks and other attractions, uses one that turns hand-drawn sketches into finished concept art, and another that makes pictures true to Disney's franchises. When Adobe announced that work on June 16, it named franchises including Mickey & Friends, Frozen, Moana, Lilo & Stitch and Cars. Kyle Laughlin, a senior vice president at Imagineering, told a news agency the tools shrink creative work that took months into hours and days. He said they also let designers try many versions quickly, which he said helps reduce costly changes once building starts, and that they are "in no way meant to replace" people's roles there.
The Nov. 9 deal takes the work beyond the parks and cruise ships. Adobe joins StudioLAB, the Walt Disney Studios' lab for testing new ideas, to explore new ways the studio's creative teams work. At ESPN's innovation center, the companies will look for ways AI can engage sports fans and bring ESPN's archive to viewers. The deal also has a marketing side: Adobe says it will have a bigger presence on Disney's media platforms and promote its work with Disney's resorts, cruise line, StudioLAB and ESPN's innovation center.
Neither company has said what the deal is worth, or which Disney films or shows, if any, will use what the models make. Adobe says work with StudioLAB and ESPN is already under way, and that more will roll out over the alliance's several years.