Here is how Disney is using AI in theme park design
Disney is partnering Adobe for AI systems to help Imagineers develop theme park attractions.
Before anyone summons a rage war over this, allow me to offer some context. Adobe announced today a partnership with Walt Disney Imagineering that I saw in action at WDI headquarters in Glendale, Calif. several weeks ago. Imagineers are using Adobe Firefly Foundry to help access and transform digital assets in their design process.
Imagineers, as well as other designers and creators, have been using automated processes for years. Many people who use Adobe’s Photoshop on a regular basis to do the same tasks have figured out how to program those tasks to happen automatically upon command. Digital feature and shorts animators have been using automated processes for in-between work since the 1990s. What the Adobe Firefly Foundry product allows is a much easier path to create those types of automations.
It’s the same spirit as vibe coding. You don’t have to get into the weeds of manually creating all the specific commands you need for each step of the process so that they can run automatically in the future. Instead, you tell the system where you want to go and what you want it to do, and the AI fills in those steps for you. If the AI model gets it wrong, you tell the AI model that and together you try again.
At Imagineering, the Adobe system can transform sketches into 2D concept art and then into 3D models much more swiftly than Imagineers could do with manually programmed transitions. The system also can access WDI’s digital library of characters and environments that artists across Disney have created. Put it all together, and an Imagineer can accelerate the design process by accessing, transforming and assembling design pieces faster than ever before. That means less development time from blue sky to opening day.
Image courtesy Adobe
What Disney’s system does not do is spawn new designs based on slop harvested from the Internet. WDI’s Adobe Firefly Foundry “trains” only on Disney’s internal catalog of digital assets.
"At Imagineering, we've always believed technology and human creativity can work together responsibly," Kyle Laughlin, SVP of R&D, Technology and Engineering at Walt Disney Imagineering, said. "Our work with Adobe lets us bring Disney stories and characters to life in our parks faster and with the emotional quality our guests expect."
“Storytelling is in Disney's DNA. Empowering creators with the latest AI innovations is in ours," Adobe GenAI New Business Ventures Vice President Hannah Elsakr said. "As the teams at Imagineering build new experiences for fans around the world, our tools and workflows will provide a creative foundation to explore bolder ideas and make the best ones a reality.”
And when I saw Imagineers call for a digital assistant to start this process, they didn’t ask for Siri or some other tech company’s brand name. They kept to a Disney-family brand and asked for Jarvis. Howard and Tony Stark would be proud.
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