Adobe

Earlier this year, Adobe debuted Firefly AI Assistant, an AI agent that could work across its family of Creative Cloud apps to complete multi-step workflows on behalf of users. Today, the company is previewing an updated Firefly creative AI studio experience that expands the capabilities of that software, starting with an upgrade to AI Assistant's ability to carry context forward. A new Elements feature allows users to save characters, locations and objects they've previously generated to reuse in future outputs. Adobe suggests this capability will allow AI Assistant to better maintain consistency across stories, campaigns and projects that evolve inside of Firefly.

Speaking of projects, another new feature allows users to group together assets and generations together to make it easier to go back to work they've done in the past. Alongside those updates, Adobe is adding a new set of creative skills to expand what its AI Assistant can do. The agent can now help you with creating a brand identity, and carry over any styling, logo, colors to every piece of content it generates for you. Other new skills include the capability to create a rough cut from a few different video clips, and generate video from storyboards.

Separately, Adobe is starting the process of integrating Firefly AI Assistant inside of its Creative Cloud apps, starting with Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Frame.io. Previously, Adobe's agent could use the company's programs to carry out prompts, but Adobe didn't offer an interface for interacting with AI Assistant directly inside of Photoshop, Premiere and elsewhere. With today's update, the company is adding that interface in the form of a sidebar you can access directly from each of the five apps included in today's update.

While you could use AI Assistant to automate entire workflows in Premiere, Photoshop and Illustrator, Adobe is envisions people primarily turning to AI Assistant as a way to delegate repetitive, time-consuming work to its models. For instance, in one demo I saw, an Adobe employee used Firefly AI Assistant inside of Illustrator to randomize the placement of hundreds of circles, each a slightly different color and size. They explained they could have done this manually, but it would have involved a lot of tedious work. I asked Adobe if the agent had a teaching mode built-in, and while you can ask Firefly AI Assistant how to complete certain tasks, it's not a computer-use agent that can take over your cursor and show you a step-by-step workflow. For now, the company says it's focused on giving people a way to spend more time making creative decisions.

Firefly AI Assistant inside of Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Frame.io is available starting today as part of a public beta. Firefly creative AI studio is currently in private beta, with Adobe granting access through a waitlist.