Adobe has introduced Firefly, the company’s new family of creative generative AI models. In the first instance, Firefly will focus on generating images and text effects.
Adobe Sensei
Adobe has incorporated AI into its Creative Cloud apps for some time through Adobe Sensei. Sensei powers feature such as Neural Filters in Photoshop and Content Aware Fill in After Effects. However, Adobe Firefly will be part of a series of new Adobe Sensei generative AI services. In addition, it will be rolled out across Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, Experience Cloud and Adobe Express workflows.
What is Firefly?
Adobe says it is designing Firefly to enable all creators, regardless of their experience or skill, to generate content. Using simple word prompts, you can create images, audio, vectors, videos and 3D. With Firefly, you can also generate creative elements such as brushes, color gradients and video transformations. However, the initial beta version of Firefly will only create high-quality images and text effects. The first applications to have Firefly integration will be Adobe Express, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.
Commercial use
One of the concerns with generative AI is that copyrighted material could be incorporated into the final work by the AI. However, Adobe says it trained Firefly on Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content and public domain content. As such, using your AI-generated works for commercial use will be safe. You shouldn’t have to worry about infringing someone else’s intellectual property (IP).
Future developments
Adobe says that it wants to build generative AI in a way that allows Adobe Stock contributors to be compensated when their work is used by the AI. Adobe also founded the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) to create a global standard for trusted digital content attribution. In addition, Adobe wants to establish a “Do Not Train” Content Credentials tag you can attach to an image. This means you could request that your content won’t be used to train AI models.
The view from Adobe
“Generative AI is the next evolution of AI-driven creativity and productivity, transforming the conversation between creator and computer into something more natural, intuitive and powerful,” said David Wadhwani, the president of Digital Media Business at Adobe. “With Firefly, Adobe will bring generative AI-powered ‘creative ingredients’ directly into customers’ workflows, increasing productivity and creative expression for all creators from high-end creative professionals to the long tail of the creator economy.”
What we think
Generative AI is the hottest topic around. As such, it’s not surprising that global leaders like Adobe want to get on board. However, it’s good to see that Adobe is taking steps to avoid their AI accidentally misusing other artists’ work and IP. This has long been a concern in relation to AI. Even better, the concept of a Do Not Train tag would mean you could take steps to protect your images wherever they go in the digital world. Hopefully, other companies will buy into Adobe’s initiative and make this goal a reality.
