Adobe revealed on Tuesday its intention to incorporate a comprehensive artificial intelligence (AI) image generation tool into its Photoshop software later this year.
While Adobe's suite of image and video editing tools remains popular among creative professionals, it faces increasing competition from emerging startups like Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Midjourney, and Stability AI. These competitors offer services capable of generating images from text prompts, challenging Adobe's dominance in the market.
To stay ahead, Adobe is actively developing its own image-generation AI system called Firefly. This proprietary system is trained on data that Adobe has rights to, ensuring compliance with copyright laws and avoiding potential infringement claims against its users.
Previously, Adobe introduced image-generation tools in Photoshop that could fill in or expand parts of an existing image.
Now, at a conference in London, the company announced its plans to introduce full image generation later this year, leveraging a new AI system named Firefly Image 3.
Adobe's focus has been on streamlining the workflow for professionals who rely on its software. The upcoming image-generation tool will be capable of using a user's uploaded image as a reference for generating fully featured images in various styles.
For instance, a designer could create a rough sketch of a scene on a napkin, capture a photo of it with a smartphone, and then instruct Photoshop to generate fully developed images based on that reference. Ely Greenfield, Chief Technology Officer for Digital Media at Adobe, emphasized the power of this capability, stating that it eliminates the need for meticulous descriptions and allows the AI to borrow from the reference image.
While Adobe has released a test "beta" version of the software to select users, the company has not provided a specific date for its general availability.