Disney sued AI image makers over its characters. Now Adobe is helping it train its own

Disney is going to train its own generative AI models on its characters, worlds and visual styles, and Adobe will help build them. The two companies announced a multi-year strategic alliance on Monday at Adobe MAX in Miami Beach, naming Adobe an Official AI Innovation Partner of The Walt Disney Company.

It is a notable turn for a company that has taken AI firms to court over copies of its characters. Disney and Universal sued Midjourney in June 2025, and Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery sued China’s MiniMax over its Hailuo video generator that September. Now Disney wants models of its own, built only around what it owns.

Custom models built on Disney’s own worlds

The centre of the deal is Adobe Firefly Foundry, the service Adobe uses to build private AI models for a single company. According to the release, Disney will work directly with Adobe on generative AI models "tailored to Disney’s properties that are human-centered and artist-led".

Adobe says the models are "trained on unique world knowledge (character attributes, environments, visual styles)" and will "generate commercially safe and production-ready outputs". That "commercially safe" promise is Adobe’s own description: the release doesn’t say what else the models are built on, how outputs will be checked, or whether anything they make will reach a released film or show.

Disney also gets early access to Adobe’s newest tools, including Firefly, Firefly Foundry, Premiere and Photoshop, plus "dedicated engineering and research resources" to support its production pipeline. No money figures were disclosed.

Already in use at Imagineering

This isn’t Disney’s first go with Firefly Foundry. Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development, the group that designs the theme parks, started using it in June. It has a sketch-to-image model that turns hand-drawn concepts into fully rendered 2D concept art, and a custom image model that makes what Adobe calls "on-brand, franchise-accurate creative assets".

The new alliance spreads that work wider. Adobe’s tools will support concept work in Disney’s innovation labs and in the development pipelines for Walt Disney World, Disneyland and Disney Cruise Line. Two more Disney groups are named:

• StudioLAB: Adobe becomes an innovation partner of The Walt Disney Studios' prototyping hub, working with Disney creatives and technologists to "explore and expand internal creative workflows".
• ESPN Edge: ESPN and Adobe will look for ways AI can boost engagement with sports fans, change how ESPN delivers content and "bring ESPN’s archive to life".

Co-innovation projects with both are already under way, the companies say, with more to roll out over the multi-year term.

"New ways to explore and develop their ideas"

Disney framed the deal as a tool for its own creative staff rather than a replacement for them. Becca Vodnoy, who runs corporate alliances at Disney, said:

By bringing together Disney’s world-class storytellers and beloved brands with Adobe’s technology, we have an exciting opportunity to give our creative teams new ways to explore and develop their ideas and bring Disney stories and experiences to life for guests and fans around the world.

Becca Vodnoy, senior vice president, Corporate Alliances, The Walt Disney Company

Hannah Elsakr, Adobe’s vice president for GenAI New Business Ventures, called it "the next chapter" of a decades-long relationship, one that "thoughtfully deploys AI as an accelerant for artistic vision, creativity and guest engagement".

Part of the deal is marketing. Adobe gets to tell Disney’s innovation stories in its own campaigns and at events such as Adobe Summit and Adobe MAX, and it will increase its presence across Disney’s media platforms.

Disney’s AI bets keep stacking up

The Adobe deal joins a run of AI moves by Disney. In December 2025 it agreed to invest $1 billion in OpenAI and license more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars for use in Sora. In October it lined up as the first bidder for Character.AI’s assets in bankruptcy, with a $20 million offer. And Epic Games has told the team making its Disney game to stop writing code by hand and let Claude do it.

The pattern so far: Disney fights AI companies that use its characters without permission, and pays for or partners on AI where it keeps control of them.

Why it matters

One of the biggest owners of characters in entertainment is now building AI on its own catalogue instead of only suing others for using it. If private, studio-owned models like these work, Hollywood’s argument with AI companies shifts from whether to use the tech to who gets to train on the characters, and on what terms.

Sources: Adobe and The Walt Disney Company (press release); Adobe (June 2026, Imagineering); NBC News (Midjourney lawsuit); AP via Claims Journal (MiniMax lawsuit); ABC News (OpenAI deal).