Adobe integrates generative AI directly into Photoshop with new Firefly capabilities

For the first time, Adobe has integrated generative AI into its flagship product Photoshop. In a beta release, the company unveiled Generative Fill, bringing its Adobe Firefly generative AI capabilities directly into design workflows. The development continues Adobe’s broad effort to inject more artificial intelligence into its creative products, particularly with Firefly, a new family of creative generative AI models which was introduced in March.

In addition to generating images from text prompts, Generative Fill automatically matches the perspective, lighting and style of images, while users can add, extend or remove newly-generated content in generative layers, allowing for rapid iteration. So when adding a puddle and floating bubbles to a photo of a corgi, for example, the puddle shows the reflection of the corgi and the bubbles appear transparent.

Supercharging Adobe Photoshop with generative AI

Generative Fill “uses the native powers of Photoshop and supercharges it with generative AI,” Maria Yap, vice president of digital imaging at Adobe, told VentureBeat. She explained that by bringing Firefly capabilities directly into Photoshop, users who felt nervous about using generative AI can realize they remain fully in control of their creativity — that it is simply another tool in their arsenal.

“Our customers are excited because Firefly is a commercially safe model, using high-quality images, making sure that there’s no copyright infringement in the creation process,” she said. “Then they’re really seeing the power of it — the reaction has been so incredible, we’ll literally hear comments like, ‘My jaw is on the desk, I cannot believe the power of this.'”

Yap added that she has been at Adobe for 25 years and working with Photoshop for nearly 18 years. “To be frank, it’s been a decade since I felt a moment like this where I felt people are just going to be shocked, surprised and delighted.”

Building on previous Adobe AI capabilities

In a press release, Adobe emphasized its decade-long history of delivering AI capabilities through its Adobe Sensei technology, including features like Neural Filters in Photoshop, Content Aware Fill in After Effects, Attribution AI in Adobe Experience Platform and Liquid Mode in Acrobat.

But since its launch six weeks ago, Adobe Firefly has become one of the company’s most successful beta launches, with beta users generating over 100 million assets. The company says that Firefly is the only AI service that generates commercially viable, professional-quality content, and is designed to be embedded directly into creators’ workflows.

Firefly’s first model is trained on Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content and other public domain content without copyright restrictions. Enterprises will be able to extend Firefly with their own creative collateral in order to generate content that includes the company’s images, vectors and brand language.