Disney names Adobe AI partner for custom Firefly models

The Walt Disney Company has named Adobe its Official AI Innovation Partner in a multi-year alliance to build generative AI models trained on Disney’s own characters, environments and visual styles. The companies announced the deal on Monday 9 November at Adobe MAX, Adobe’s annual creativity conference, in a joint release datelined Miami Beach and Burbank. Neither disclosed financial terms.

The models run on Adobe Firefly Foundry, the service Adobe launched a year ago to tune its Firefly models on a client’s own catalogue. So far they are in use only in Disney’s parks business, through a Walt Disney Imagineering collaboration Adobe first disclosed in June. For the film studio, the alliance is still a lab partnership aimed first at post-production and visual effects.

Key facts

Partners: The Walt Disney Company and Adobe; multi-year term, with length and financial terms undisclosed
Tools: early access to Firefly, Firefly Foundry, Premiere and Photoshop, plus dedicated Adobe engineers and researchers
In use: Imagineering R&D runs a sketch-to-image model and a custom image model in theme park development
Studio: Adobe joins the Walt Disney Studios’ StudioLAB, starting with custom models for post-production and VFX
Not named: Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm or any film or series

What Disney gets

At the centre of the deal are Firefly Foundry models customised on Disney properties, which the companies call “human-centered and artist-led” and say will produce “commercially safe and production-ready” outputs. The release calls them proprietary; Reuters reported that they will be private to Disney. Adobe will also give Disney teams early access to new software and assign engineers and researchers to what the release calls the Disney production pipeline.

Imagineering’s research and development unit already runs two of the models: one turns hand-drawn sketches into fully rendered 2D concept art, the other generates franchise-accurate images for park projects. In June, Adobe named Frozen, Moana and Lilo & Stitch among the franchises they reproduce. Kyle Laughlin, senior vice-president of R&D technology and engineering at Walt Disney Imagineering, told Reuters that the tools compress creative work “that would have taken months” into “hours and days”, and that they are “in no way meant to replace” Imagineering staff.

The studio and ESPN

Adobe joins StudioLAB, the Walt Disney Studios hub where creative and technical staff prototype new tools, as an innovation partner. An Adobe blog post published with the release says the first projects there will be custom models for post-production and VFX. At the ESPN Edge Innovation Center, the two will test AI for fan engagement and for new uses of ESPN’s archive. Work with both labs is already under way.

The rest is largely marketing: a bigger Adobe presence across Disney’s media platforms and promotion through its parks, cruise line and industry events. Hannah Elsakr, Adobe’s vice-president for GenAI new business ventures, called the deal “the next chapter” of a decades-long relationship.

Adobe’s enterprise pitch

Adobe launched Firefly Foundry in October 2025 and presented it at that month’s MAX. Its staff fine-tune a model on a client’s intellectual property, starting from Firefly models that Adobe says were trained entirely on licensed data. TechCrunch reported at launch that the service is priced by usage, not per seat.

After Sora

The alliance follows the collapse of Disney’s OpenAI deal. In December 2025 Disney agreed a three-year licence for more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters on OpenAI’s Sora video app, alongside a planned $1bn equity investment in OpenAI. OpenAI said in March 2026 that it was shutting Sora down, and the partnership ended with it; Reuters reported that no money had changed hands. Disney said it respected “OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business”. Our report on Hollywood’s briefs in the OpenAI copyright case follows the wider fight over training data.

What is not known

Neither company disclosed payments, the length of the term or any revenue share. Nothing in the announcement says whether a feature, series or animated production will use the models, how outputs would be credited, or how the work fits with union agreements on AI.

Our reading

Disney’s OpenAI bet sent its characters outward, into a consumer app someone else controlled, and it ended when that company changed course. The Adobe alliance runs the other way: models that only Disney’s own staff use, from a vendor whose pitch rests on licensed training data. The vendor still matters, but the characters stay inside Disney.

For filmmakers the signal is narrower than the branding. The only disclosed deployment is concept art for theme parks, and the studio work starts in post-production and VFX rather than in writing, design or animation. That puts Disney closer to Toei’s statement that it has set rules for generative AI in production than to any studio handing a film to a model. The next evidence is whether a Disney film or series credits a Firefly Foundry model, and whether StudioLAB’s prototypes reach a live production.

Disney names Adobe its AI partner to build proprietary models on its own characters

Key facts

What Disney gets

The studio and ESPN

Adobe’s enterprise pitch

After Sora

What is not known

Our reading

Sources

Disney names Adobe its AI partner to build proprietary models on its own characters

Key facts

What Disney gets

The studio and ESPN

Adobe’s enterprise pitch

After Sora

What is not known

Our reading

Sources

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