Adobe Disney AI Alliance: Custom Firefly Models for Parks and ESPN

Adobe and The Walt Disney Company have signed a multi-year alliance that makes Adobe Disney’s Official AI Innovation Partner, the companies announced on November 9, 2026, as Adobe MAX got under way in Miami Beach. Disney will use Adobe’s Firefly Foundry to build its own generative AI models, trained on Disney characters, settings and visual styles, for teams at its theme parks, cruise line, film studio and ESPN. No financial terms were disclosed.

What happened

The deal was announced in a joint release from Miami Beach, where Adobe’s yearly creativity conference runs from November 10 to 12, and Burbank, Disney’s home. It builds on an existing relationship: in June, Adobe and Walt Disney Imagineering said they were bringing Firefly Foundry into Imagineering’s Theme Park Design Toolkit.

Under the new agreement, Disney gets early access to Adobe Firefly, Firefly Foundry, Premiere and Photoshop, along with dedicated Adobe engineering and research staff. In return, Adobe can tell Disney innovation stories in its marketing, at industry events and in customer case studies, and it will have a bigger presence across Disney’s media platforms.

Key details: which Disney teams are involved?

The announcement names five Disney businesses:

• Walt Disney World Resort
• Disneyland Resort
• Disney Cruise Line
• ESPN Edge, ESPN’s innovation centre
• StudioLAB at Walt Disney Studios

Each has a slightly different focus, according to Adobe’s business blog:

• Walt Disney Imagineering is testing a sketch-to-image model that turns rough hand-drawn ideas into 2D concept art, and a custom image model that produces on-brand, franchise-accurate assets. These tools are meant to speed up early theme park design.
• StudioLAB has made Adobe a StudioLAB Innovation Partner. Their first projects focus on custom AI models for post-production and visual effects. No films have been named.
• ESPN Edge will look at how AI can help with fan engagement, sports highlights, documentaries and bringing ESPN’s archive back to life.

The companies say some joint projects are already under way and that more will roll out over the term of the deal.

What is Firefly Foundry?

Firefly Foundry is Adobe’s service for building private generative AI models trained on a single company’s content. Instead of using a general model trained on the open web, a studio can have a model that knows its own characters, worlds and art style.

Adobe says models built this way are commercially safe and production-ready. For Disney, the main benefit is control: the models stay private, and the intellectual property they learn from stays inside the company. Both firms describe the models as “artist-led”, meaning they are designed to support Disney’s creative staff rather than produce finished work on their own.

Hannah Elsakr, Adobe’s vice president of GenAI New Business Ventures, said in the release that Disney uses AI as “an accelerant for artistic vision, creativity and guest engagement.” Kyle Laughlin, who leads technology and engineering at Walt Disney Imagineering R&D, said in Adobe’s blog that “the best technology amplifies human creativity.”

Why it matters for designers

The deal is one of the clearest signs yet of where Adobe wants to take its creative tools. Rather than only selling software subscriptions, Adobe is positioning itself as an infrastructure partner for AI that builds custom models for big brands. Creative Bloq’s Joe Foley argued that this could become a template for other entertainment companies that want AI without handing their characters to a frontier AI lab.

The timing has also drawn questions. Creative Bloq noted that Disney has made several rounds of layoffs in 2026, including cuts in July that affected Pixar artists, and that some designers will read the deal as a way for fewer people to do more work. Disney and Adobe frame it the other way, as giving artists faster ways to explore ideas.

For working designers, the practical change is the spread of “brand-trained” AI inside familiar apps. If a company the size of Disney builds private models into its Photoshop and Premiere workflows, agencies and freelancers working for big brands may increasingly be asked to use those custom models instead of public ones.

What happens next

Adobe’s main MAX keynote takes place on November 10, with more product announcements expected through November 12. Our Adobe MAX 2026 preview has the full schedule, and our comparison of Canva, Adobe Express and Figma explains how Adobe’s tools stack up for everyday design work.

Neither company has said how long the alliance runs, whether it is exclusive or how much it is worth.