IMAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR ADOBE - Anil Chakravarthy, President of Digital Experience at Adobe, left, ... [+]
Generative AI is the name of the game in big tech right now, and Adobe isn’t about to get left behind. The company recently announced a beta of its new creative generative AI support, Adobe Firefly, which promises to help users with little to no experience in graphic design create their own images and text effects. The announcement comes hot off the heels of Microsoft’s own generative AI launch. Its new solution, Copilot, is set to empower users of 365 and Dynamics 365 to auto-generate written content automatically. So, whether you struggle with writing, graphic design, or overall organizational skills, it’s an exciting time to get a boost from generative AI.
A Generative AI Recap
In case you’ve missed some of the hottest tech news lately, generative artificial intelligence is a sub-set of AI that can create text, art, imagery or other forms of content based on prompts from an individual user. The popularity was stoked last fall when OpenAI rolled our ChatGPT. Since then, tons of solutions, from AI art creator starryai to Shutterfly’s AI image generator, are turning the world on its head by empowering literally anyone to create world-class writing, art, images, and content with the click of a button.
And it’s making headlines all over. This week Bill Gates published a blog on his website where he called generative AI “the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface.” And I would have to agree with him. The advancements that have been made in the last few months are astounding. It’s no wonder that Adobe is throwing its proverbial hat in the ring.
How does Adobe Firefly work?
While a lot of people may not associate Adobe with AI, it’s actually been integrating things like neural filters, content aware fills and other features in its products for years, helping users create and edit their images and documents more quickly and easily. According to Adobe, Firefly is set to give creators “new superpowers” in their day-to-day work. Using Firefly, users will be able to create images, vectors, 3D imagery, audio and video, brushes, gradients and more, on brand, instantly. Ideally, this will help them keep up with the huge demand for new content being felt on social, email, and other channels. Firefly will also be able to train with a company’s specific collateral to help it learn to recreate the nuances of a specific brand or style. Essentially, Adobe Firefly promises to disrupt marketing teams everywhere by empowering literally anyone in the enterprise to create images and graphic design effects at any experience level.
What do Creatives Say about Generative AI?
Generative AI is full of amazing promise, but it’s also opening a pandora’s box of issues in the creative realm. Some artists have held protests to show their growing frustration with AI-generated art apps that allow lay people to sell and create art that they didn’t actually “create.” Businesses have had to adjust the way they work with artists to prevent legal issues surrounding licensing and copyright. For instance, Getty Images has banned the sale of illustrations and content created by AI on its site. Meanwhile, the Wix-owned site DeviantArt decided to create protections for creators that prevent generative AI platforms from “scraping” artist work from their site.
For its part, Adobe is trying to avoid any controversy surrounding generative AI. It says Firefly is being “trained” using Adobe Stock images, which are openly licensed graphics that won’t infringe on copyrighted work. This ensures, at least theoretically, that the content Firefly produces will not be based on any specific company’s brand or other licensed images available online.
In addition to the above protections, Adobe says creators will be able to hide their content from its AI training model to ensure Firefly doesn’t learn from their designs if they don’t want it to. Adobe also says it will be creating a compensation model for Adobe Stock contributors so they can rightly benefit from Firefly’s success (and yes, I’m assuming it will be wildly successful).
Lastly, to keep the buyers of artwork safe, designs created with Firefly will contain metadata that indicates it was created in part (or whole) by generative AI.
Personally, I’m impressed with the length Adobe has gone to be transparent about how its models are being trained and how it intends to innovate with AI while being cognizant of its community of designers and creatives that have been paramount to building Adobe’s success.
Adobe Firefly - Request Access
Folks interested in trying out Adobe Firefly will first need to request access here. The company says it will be sending out invitations over time to individuals who express interest in being part of its beta group. Current Firefly betas are available for text to image, text effects, and recoloring vectors. Other options in development include text to pattern, 3D to image, sketch to image, text to brush and more.
The Generative AI Road Ahead
While generative AI is driving a fundamental change to so many industries in such a short amount of time, it is a certainty to play a role in the growth of productivity in a vast number of professions. Watching the tech industries iconic companies enter one after another should surprise no one, but the longer term affects will be important to watch as we certainly see the excitement around generative AI, but the way people advance with this technology will act as a fascinating lesson in human evolution.
