- Disney Imagineering plans to use Adobe’s Firefly AI services to build the next generation of theme park attractions based on its own intellectual property.
- Disney says the move builds on decades of collaboration between the two companies.
- The move is seen as a major win for Adobe as it navigates increasingly pessimistic investor sentiment with its own AI offerings.
Adobe and Walt Disney Imagineering have revealed that the studio’s research and development arm will leverage technology from Adobe’s Firefly Foundry to design future parks, hotels, cruise ships and attractions.
Adobe’s Firefly Foundry AI offering is not just another one-size-fits-all service, but one customized to meet Disney’s unique needs. The custom AI is trained on Disney’s own intellectual property offerings, allowing it to begin what the companies call a “responsibly built” solution to handle the following workflows:
– A sketch-to-image model that transforms rough hand-drawn concepts into fully rendered 2D concept art.
– A custom image model trained on Disney’s own intellectual property that generates franchise-accurate creative assets across Mickey & Friends, Frozen, Moana, Lilo & Stitch, and Cars.
– A 3D modeling capability that takes 2D representations and transforms them into detailed prototypes for planning construction and coordinating with engineering teams.
How is AI helping build the next generation of Disney attractions?
Kyle Laughlin, senior vice president of R&D for Walt Disney Imagineering, said the company is a “long-time user” of Adobe’s Creative Cloud tools, with a relationship spanning decades, and was also among the early adopters of its Firefly offerings.
“We were looking for a collaborator who could help us do this responsibly and in a way that ultimately respected the fact that we are a creator-driven company,” Laughlin said. “We are a company driven by talent and respecting that the creative process has humans as part of what we do.”
Disney says it doesn’t plan to replace the human element in the process, but will use solutions provided by Firefly to compress workloads and speed things up considerably, even as “the results remain consistent with the company’s narrative heritage and visual language.”
“As Imagineering teams create new experiences for fans around the world, our tools and workflows will provide a creative foundation to explore bolder ideas and bring the best ones to life,” said Hannah Elsakr, vice president of GenAI New Business Ventures at Adobe.
Collaborations with companies like Disney are the need of the hour for Adobe, whose investors often question the viability of its business model in an AI-enabled future where everyone has access to generative AI tools, even as it presents itself as a leader in a rapidly evolving industry.
The move is seen as a big win for Adobe, as Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development is arguably one of the biggest clients it could court for its Firefly Foundry service.
The move comes at a time when Disney is a plaintiff in multiple intellectual property-focused lawsuits against artificial intelligence companies, including image and video generation company Midjourney, that have allegedly plagiarized and therefore abused its copyrights.
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