Many of us remember our first magical Disney moment. Mine came at age five, after a long drive from Queens to Orlando in our brown Chevy station wagon. Walking into the Magic Kingdom felt like stepping into the stories of Snow White, Cinderella and Peter Pan all at once. Decades later, my own children have had their first moments of wonder, exploring worlds of Cars, Frozen, and Mickey & Friends.
Every Disney story starts with an idea for a new world. Bringing that world to life takes creative vision — it also takes a nearly obsessive attention to the characters and details that make the world feel authentic.
For decades, Adobe’s tools have been at the heart of creative workflows in media and entertainment. We deeply understand the precise control that creators need to build their worlds, and we’ve earned multiple Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievement. We’re proud to have worked alongside The Walt Disney Company for much of our history, with our tech underpinning everything from their content production pipeline to personalized marketing campaigns and guest experiences.
Now, we’re deepening that relationship through a multi-year strategic alliance focused on AI co-innovation that enables amplification of our shared innovation stories with Walt Disney World® Resort, Disneyland® Resort, Disney Cruise Line, ESPN Edge, and StudioLAB through global marketing activations, industry events, thought leadership, customer storytelling, and other strategic engagement opportunities. The relationship also enables Disney to accelerate opportunities for their creative teams to explore emerging technologies, including responsibly developed AI. The collaboration builds on work already underway at Walt Disney Imagineering and extends to The Walt Disney Studios’ StudioLAB and ESPN Edge.
As an Official AI Innovation Partner of The Walt Disney Company, Adobe provides access to the latest AI, creative and media technologies across Adobe Firefly, Firefly Foundry, Premiere, Photoshop, among others, along with dedicated engineering and research resources to support the Disney production pipeline.
For Adobe, this collaboration reflects a clear ambition: to put the creator at the center of AI content production in service of artistic vision, creativity, and guest engagement. This alliance will help teams bring their ideas to life faster, while protecting and celebrating artists and their work.
Bringing Disney’s imagination into focus.
A rough sketch can be the starting point for an entirely new experience. Disney Imagineers are experimenting with Firefly Foundry to bring new ideas into the theme park development pipeline with greater speed, including a sketch-to-image model that transforms rough hand-drawn concepts into fully rendered 2D concept art.
Creative precision is essential to this work. These artist-led proprietary models are customized using Disney intellectual property, including unique world knowledge like character attributes, environments, and visual styles. They generate commercially safe, production-ready outputs while accelerating work so teams can ideate and develop more creative projects.
“The best technology amplifies human creativity. Adobe’s tools help our Imagineers explore bigger ideas, move from imagination to reality faster, and spend more time on the creative details that make Disney experiences extraordinary,” says Kyle Laughlin, Senior Vice President, Walt Disney Imagineering R&D – Technology & Engineering.
Expanding creative possibilities across film and sports.
The next chapter reaches beyond Imagineering.
As a StudioLAB Innovation Partner of The Walt Disney Studios, Adobe will collaborate with Disney creatives and technologists to explore how AI can support creative workflows. Initial projects will focus on custom AI models for post-production and VFX use cases that preserve creative vision and accelerate efficiency.
The ESPN Edge Innovation Center was established to explore, test, and implement emerging technologies that impact the art of sports storytelling. There, ESPN and Adobe will identify ways for AI to enhance engagement with sports fans and shape how ESPN delivers content such as sports highlights and documentaries, as well as new ways to bring ESPN's archive to life.
“The StudioLAB team is always looking to expand the toolbox for our storytellers at every step of the creative process”, says Sonia Doshi, Vice President of Strategic Operations, Design & Production, Walt Disney Studios’ StudioLAB. “We are excited to collaborate with Adobe to amplify the imagination of artists across Disney Studios.”
Kevin Lopes, Vice President of Sports Business Development & Innovation at ESPN, adds, “Through ESPN Edge, we’re continually exploring new ways to advance sports storytelling. Our collaboration with Adobe gives our creative teams access to powerful tools that can help them enhance their creative processes and find new ways to engage sports fans.”
Building the next chapter together.
Through the alliance, Adobe will increase its presence across Disney’s media platforms to connect with audiences across entertainment and sports. It is also expected to come to life at Adobe MAX, Adobe Summit, and other major industry conferences, with additional activations and experiences rolling out over the multi-year alliance.
Co-innovation projects are already underway. Every first Disney moment, mine included, was built by artists who obsess over the details so the rest of us can get lost in the story. We’re proud to collaborate with Disney, giving its creators the technology to explore new possibilities while protecting their work and the vision behind their world-shaping stories.
Learn how Adobe Firefly Foundry can help your business build AI models around its unique brand and intellectual property.
