Adobe and Disney sign multi-year AI creative-tools alliance

Adobe and The Walt Disney Company announced a multi-year strategic alliance on Monday at Adobe’s MAX conference, under which Adobe will build custom generative-AI models trained specifically on Disney’s characters, environments and visual styles for use across the company’s innovation labs, theme-park development and cruise-line pipelines. Neither company disclosed financial terms or the exact length of the agreement.

Adobe framed the deal as the next phase of a decades-long relationship in which its tools already support Disney’s content pipelines, marketing campaigns and park experiences, according to Hannah Elsakr, Adobe’s vice president of GenAI New Business Ventures. Disney’s Becca Vodnoy, senior vice president of corporate alliances, said the partnership gives the company’s “world-class storytellers” new ways to develop ideas using Adobe’s technology.

Under the alliance, Disney gets early access to Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s generative-AI tool for creatives, along with Firefly Foundry — Adobe’s platform for building proprietary AI models — plus Premiere and Photoshop, backed by dedicated Adobe engineering and research staff. Adobe says the Firefly Foundry models it builds for Disney are human-centered and artist-led, trained on Disney’s own characters, environments and visual styles to produce outputs the companies describe as commercially safe and production-ready. At Walt Disney Imagineering, the Research & Development group has already put Firefly Foundry to work in the theme-park pipeline, including a sketch-to-image tool that turns hand-drawn concepts into rendered 2D concept art, and a custom model built to keep generated assets on-brand and franchise-accurate.

The alliance also reaches into two of Disney’s internal innovation units: Adobe becomes a partner of StudioLAB, the Walt Disney Studios’ innovation hub, and will work with ESPN Edge, the network’s technology center, on using AI to deepen engagement with sports fans and bring ESPN’s archive into current content. Both companies say co-innovation projects with StudioLAB and ESPN Edge are already underway, with further activity planned around Adobe Summit, Adobe MAX and other industry events, alongside joint marketing campaigns.

Why it matters

The deal gives Adobe a marquee customer for Firefly Foundry’s core pitch: that a studio can train generative-AI models on its own characters and intellectual property without losing creative control. For Disney, it’s a bet that AI trained specifically on its own IP can speed up concept work across parks, cruises and studios while keeping outputs what the companies call “commercially safe and production-ready.”