Adobe and The Walt Disney Company have signed a multi-year alliance to develop generative AI models trained exclusively on Disney's own archives. The agreement gives Disney's theme parks, film studios and ESPN custom AI tools capable of producing content that the company owns outright.

The partnership was unveiled at Adobe MAX, Adobe's annual creativity conference, and centers on Firefly Foundry, a platform that enables companies to build AI models using their own proprietary content. Any content generated through Disney's models will remain private and belong to Disney.

Training limited to Disney-owned material

A central element of the deal is that the models will be trained solely on Disney's own library. Adobe said this approach will make it possible to create images and other content based on Disney's characters, settings and visual styles that the company can safely use, FT.com reported.

The custom toolkit offers three core capabilities. It can generate images in Disney's signature style and transform rough sketches into finished images. It can also convert simple designs into 3D models that designers can edit and view from different angles.

Parks, studios and ESPN in scope

The agreement spans several divisions of Disney's business. The company's theme parks, resorts and cruise ships plan to use the AI models to speed up projects. Walt Disney Studios will apply the tools to early-stage design work through its StudioLAB team, while ESPN will deploy the technology to reach sports fans and make more of its archived content available.

As part of the deal, Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) will become an official AI partner to Disney. Disney will gain early access to Adobe Firefly, Premiere and Photoshop, along with support from Adobe's engineers. Neither company has disclosed the financial terms of the agreement.

Pilot cut months of work to days

The two companies have already tested the technology. They launched two AI models on June 16, 2026, through Walt Disney Imagineering, the team that designs Disney's parks and attractions. One of the tools converts sketches into images. The test project reduced work that typically takes months to just a few days.

Kyle Laughlin, Disney's senior vice president of technology, engineering and R&D, told Reuters that the tools have helped speed up creative work. Tasks that once took months can now be completed in hours or days, he said. Laughlin added that the tools are not meant to replace Imagineering staff.

Why licensed training data matters

The deal also reflects how major companies are approaching AI development. Many widely used image generators were trained on content taken from the internet, raising questions about the ownership of both the training material and the images produced. Disney aims to avoid these issues by training its models only on content it owns. For a company whose characters, settings and visual styles are core to its business, that structure ties the new tools directly to intellectual property it already controls rather than to material of uncertain ownership.

For Adobe, the partnership demonstrates that Firefly Foundry can help enterprises build AI models grounded in their own content, giving the platform a prominent enterprise use case. For Disney, the main benefit is completing work faster while preserving its familiar visual style.

Questions remain about the practical scope of the tools. Because the models are trained solely on Disney's existing material, they can only draw on content the company has already created. Deploying them across its studios, resorts and ESPN operations could also prove to be a bigger challenge, and whether the days-long turnaround seen in the Imagineering pilot holds at that scale will be an early measure of the alliance's real-world reach.

The announcement comes as Disney weighs major cost reductions. Bloomberg News reported that the company is considering cutting thousands of jobs and reducing its annual spending by 20%.