Disney is about to get AI-generated park sets

Walt Disney Imagineering, the media and entertainment company’s design and engineering firm behind its parks and cruises, has its own new bespoke AI model from Adobe. The goal is to use the technology to help create attractions and environmental design, like storefronts and architecture, at a pace that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. The custom AI is build on Firefly Foundry, Adobe’s boutique AI service that trains on a brand’s IP and catalog. For Imagineering, that meant ingesting decades of data, including artist drawings and every architectural diagram and piece of concept art they’ve ever created. “It’s on people’s laptops, it’s underneath people’s desks, it is in people’s brains,” Walt Disney Imagineering senior vice president of R&D technology and engineering Kyle Laughlin tells Fast Company. “It literally is in dozens of disparate systems that using artificial intelligence now we’re able to unify for the very first time.” [Image: Adobe and Disney Imagineering] Imagineering’s bespoke AI model is based on billions of parameters capable of generating on-brand Disney assets. A sketch-to-image model turns hand-drawn concepts into 2D concept art, a custom image model generates franchise-accurate creative assets for characters like Mickey Mouse and Lilo and Stitch, and the 3D-modeling tool can turn 2D renderings into prototypes. What that means is quicker output that all fits the broader Disney brand guide. “Our project timelines last five, six, seven years, and our ability to compress that time frame is incredibly important as we think about creating high-quality experiences that we can get in front of guests faster,” Laughlin says. Much of the work they do in the early phases is around concepts, and AI will enable them to go from a 2D sketch to 3D view of park assets in a short timespan. Iteration processes that once took months will now take days, he says.