Disney and Adobe Launch Multiyear AI Partnership for Storytelling, Adobe Pushes Global Rules to Protect Creators’ Copyright, Argentina’s ‘Listen to MEH’ Wins $500,000 Higgsfield AI Film Prize and other news
Argentina’s PURGA Studio has won the $500,000 top prize at Higgsfield’s Global Film Festival for Listen to MEH, while Adobe is lobbying governments to protect creators from commercial AI imitation of their work. Disney has also struck a multiyear deal with Adobe to build custom generative AI models for filmmaking, theme parks, ESPN and marketing. The 1 Billion AI Film Award is offering $1 million for Seedance-made shorts, Disney’s accelerator has backed an all-AI startup cohort, and a new study finds 81% of U.S. creative professionals have already released AI-generated or AI-assisted work. But the disruption is not cost-free. And remember when industry leaders insisted AI would not replace creative jobs? Fashion photo studios are now closing as brands turn to synthetic models.
Argentina’s ‘Listen to MEH’ Wins $500,000 Higgsfield AI Film Prize
Argentina’s PURGA Studio has won the $500,000 top prize at the Higgsfield Global Film Festival for Listen to MEH, its first fiction short made with AI-generated video and images. The Buenos Aires-based studio received the award on November 10 after Higgsfield distributed a $1 million prize pool among 14 winners. Listen to MEH is set on a remote ranch in Argentina’s Pampas grasslands. A lone gaucho repeatedly finds a black sheep on the roof of his farmhouse. As a storm approaches, his efforts to remove the animal become an obsession. Directors Martín and Manuel Montes de Oca created the film with Bautista Vidal and Joaquín Iraola, blending absurdism, suspense, and magical realism.
Higgsfield required entrants to generate AI video and images inside its Cinema Studio. The festival received 67,223 project starts from 176 countries, according to PURGA. The jury included Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull, cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, Resident Evil director Paul W. S. Anderson, and Dark City filmmaker Alex Proyas.
Adobe Pushes Global Rules to Protect Creators’ Copyright
Adobe is urging governments worldwide to create stronger protections for creators whose artistic styles can be imitated by commercial generative AI systems. Chief Legal Officer Louise Pentland said Adobe is lobbying regulators in multiple countries to address gaps left by existing copyright and trademark law. In the United States, Adobe supports the Creator Act, introduced in the House on June 2, 2026. The bill would create a federal intellectual-property right, separate from copyright and trademark, allowing visual artists or rights holders to control certain commercial exploitation or public distribution of stylistic impersonations. The proposed right would not cover ideas, genres, artistic movements or widely used visual styles. It would also preserve exceptions for criticism, research and some parody, subject to conditions involving commercial use intended to mislead audiences about source, sponsorship or approval.
Adobe’s push comes as creators seek clearer rules on AI training data, licensing and attribution. Pentland said the company is engaging regulators directly because copyright rules differ by country and governments remain divided over how far to regulate AI without slowing innovation. Adobe is also positioning creator controls as a commercial feature. Its Firefly products allow customers to choose models and determine what data and prompts they use, while Firefly Foundry offers enterprises customized models trained on proprietary content. The company’s Content Credentials technology embeds provenance metadata showing how and when content was created and whether it was later modified.
Disney and Adobe Launch Multiyear AI Partnership for Storytelling
Disney and Adobe have launched a multiyear strategic partnership to develop generative AI tools for Disney’s film, theme-park, cruise, sports and marketing operations. Under the agreement, Disney will work with Adobe’s Firefly Foundry to build proprietary, “artist-led” AI models tailored to Disney properties. The models will be trained on Disney-specific material, including character attributes, environments, and visual styles, to produce commercially safe, production-ready assets while speeding creative development.
Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development is already using Firefly Foundry in theme-park development. Its tools include a sketch-to-image model that converts hand-drawn concepts into finished 2D concept art and a custom image model that generates on-brand, franchise-accurate creative assets. Disney will also receive early access to Adobe Firefly and Firefly Foundry, along with Premiere for video editing, Photoshop for digital imaging, and dedicated engineering and research support. The partnership extends beyond production. Adobe will expand its presence across Disney’s media platforms and work with Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland Resort, Disney Cruise Line, ESPN Edge and StudioLAB on marketing activations, industry events and customer storytelling. Adobe and Disney creatives will explore internal workflows through StudioLAB, while ESPN Edge will examine AI’s use in sports content, fan engagement and archival material. Co-innovation projects are already underway, with additional activations planned during the multiyear agreement.
1 Billion AI Film Award Offers $1 Million for Seedance-Made Shorts
Filmmakers worldwide can compete for a $1 million grand prize in the 2027 1 Billion AI Film Award, a competition requiring original short films made primarily with ByteDance’s Dreamina Seedance. Entries close November 20, 2026. The competition is part of the 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai and is open to filmmakers aged 18 and older. Entrants may submit multiple original films, provided each has a separate application. Each entry must run five to seven minutes, be formatted in 16:9 at a minimum of 1080p, and include English subtitles. At least 70% of each film must be generated with Seedance. Creators may use other AI tools and conventional editing software for supporting production work.
Organizers have set five themes: society, community and humanitarian issues; truth, fake news and misinformation; humans and AI; climate and nature; and human relationships. Judging will weigh AI integration and storytelling at 30% each, with creativity and aesthetics and technical execution at 20% each. The top 10 films will be announced December 15, when public voting begins. Five finalists will be named December 25, with screenings at the summit on January 9, 2027. The winner will be announced January 10.
Disney Accelerator Goes All-In on AI Startups
Walt Disney Co. used its 2026 Accelerator Demo Day to showcase an all-AI startup cohort, signaling a broader corporate embrace of generative tools, robotics and synthetic research across filmmaking, marketing and theme parks. The five-company program, now in its second decade, gives selected startups 15 weeks of access to Disney leaders, along with investment capital and potential collaboration opportunities.
This year’s cohort includes three unicorns: Simile, valued at $2 billion; FieldAI, valued at $10 billion; and Physical Intelligence, valued at $20 billion. Promise Advanced Imagination demonstrated MUSE, an AI-native system for “gray box” filmmaking, in which directors shoot in a neutral studio while AI adds digital environments and props in near-real time. OpenArt presented a prompt-based video platform that Disney is testing for lyric videos and marketing assets. FieldAI and Physical Intelligence focused on physical automation. FieldAI’s software enables robots to interpret their surroundings and act without extensive preprogramming, while Physical Intelligence is exploring robotic handling and cleaning of 3-D glasses at Disney parks. Haddy is developing AI-guided robotic 3-D printing for large-scale park sets. Simile is building synthetic focus groups from digital twins based on survey data, helping Disney test guest experiences such as digital booking.
Disney Vice President of Corporate Innovation David Min said the company is testing how the technologies can fit existing workflows while keeping artists involved.
Study Finds AI Now Mainstream in Creative Work
A new study finds that artificial intelligence has become mainstream in creative work, with 81% of U.S. creative professionals saying they have released AI-generated or AI-assisted content. Luma’s inaugural “State of Creative Professionals and AI: 2026” report, released at Brandweek, surveyed 760 professionals across agencies, brands, production companies, and freelance work. It found that 71% believe AI delivers more productivity benefits than drawbacks, while 40% say it improves both efficiency and creative quality. However, sixty-two percent of respondents said they are worried about becoming too reliant on AI at the expense of human creativity.
The study also found uneven implementation. Although 72% rated their access to AI tools as good or excellent, more than half said their organizations lack a formal process for evaluating and approving them. Organizations surveyed evaluated an average of 6.1 AI tools over the past year, adopted 4.3, and discontinued 2.9. The report identified a gap between “AI Leaders” and “AI Laggards.” Among leaders, 78% have released video projects in which AI generated most or all of the content, compared with 11% of laggards. The findings also point to economic friction: 55% of agency respondents expect AI to support higher fees, while 53% of brand-side respondents expect to reduce agency spending as internal tools expand in-house production.
Fashion Photo Studios Close as AI Models Expand
Fashion photo studios are closing as brands adopt generative AI to cut production costs, according to a Reuters report cited by PetaPixel. The shift is eliminating jobs and changing how models license their images. Zalando, Europe’s largest online fashion retailer, closed both of its Berlin photo studios in favor of AI-generated imagery, resulting in 340 job losses, though the company said some workers moved to other roles. German retailer About You launched Scayle Studios, an AI imagery operation it says reduces production costs by 90%. The technology allows brands to create synthetic models or reuse images of human models in new contexts.
Reuters reviewed contracts from companies including Calvin Klein, Diesel and L’Oréal that grant broad rights to alter, reconstruct or reuse models’ likenesses, sometimes without additional payment. A draft Calvin Klein contract reportedly allowed the company to use unrecognizable images of a model to train AI tools, with no extra compensation. Diesel said a casting sheet permitting facial and body alterations applied only to one campaign and was not typical. The developments mark a structural change in fashion photography. Brands gain faster, cheaper content for e-commerce, while photographers, studios and models face reduced demand and weaker control over their images.
