Analyst(s): Keith Kirkpatrick
Publication Date: October 15, 2024
Adobe announced several new features and enhancements to its platform, focusing largely on generative AI capabilities, content creation scalability, and greater collaboration between users. Notable highlights include the embedding of additional AI features in core applications such as Photoshop and Premiere Pro, a new Firefly Video Model for safe commercial use, the improvement of enterprise tools such as Frame.io, and the launch of GenStudio for Performance Marketing to streamline collaboration and optimize marketing content creation.
What is Covered in this Article:
- Generative AI in Creative Cloud Apps: Adobe is adding AI features powered by their Firefly technology to core applications such as Photoshop and Premiere Pro. This will allow for tasks such as extending video clips seamlessly or creating variations on existing designs.
- Firefly Video Model: A new beta model for safe commercial use of generative AI in video editing, featuring new functionality and capabilities.
- Enhanced Collaboration Tools: Improvements to Frame.io streamline collaboration for creative teams working across different media. Additionally, new camera integrations allow for direct upload from Canon, Nikon, and Leica cameras.
- GenStudio for Performance Marketing: A new application that leverages AI to optimize the entire marketing content creation process, from planning to measurement.
- Project Neo Preview: A glimpse into the future of 3D creation with intuitive controls, making it easier for 2D artists to transition into the 3D space.
The News: Adobe made several announcements at its annual Adobe MAX conference focused on embedding generative AI-enabled features across its Creative Cloud Suite of Applications. Adobe also revealed enhancements to its core applications designed to aid the scalability of the content creation and distribution process through improvements to Adobe Frame.io, Adobe Express, and the announcement of a new application, Adobe GenStudio, for Performance Marketing. The company also announced the beta availability of a new Firefly Video Model, and functional enhancements to its Firefly Image, Vector, and Design models.
Will Adobe’s New Creativity and Scalability Enhancements Deliver Value?
Analyst Take: Each fall, Adobe rolls out a host of new features and enhancements to its Creative Cloud Suite, as well as other applications and services that are designed to elicit ‘oohs and aahs’ from the crowd in attendance. This year’s Adobe MAX did not disappoint; the company’s announcement and demonstration of new features within Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, InDesign, and Lightroom addressed the concern that Adobe was falling behind in the market from a technological perspective. In fact, I overheard at least one comment about how Adobe’s newest enhancements were helping to bring the company’s offerings on par with those from Figma, the company Adobe tried to buy last year, but the deal was thwarted by the Federal Trade Commission.
The following announcements were particularly interesting to me:
- Generative Enhancements Embedded in Core Apps: Firefly-powered generative AI enhancements are being incorporated into Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier Pro, and Lightroom, providing new and more efficient ways to handle a variety of tasks. Among the most notable features is the Firefly-powered Generative Extend for seamless clip extensions incorporated into Premier Pro. This enables video editors to extend a pre-recorded clip with video and audio covering wonky transitions or filling gaps within a longer piece, without requiring additional footage to be reshot or reusing existing shots. This is an example of generative AI being used to address a previously unmet need, and I expect there will be significant use of the feature.
- Firefly Video Model: Adobe has launched the Firefly Video Model in beta, which has been designed for safe commercial use. The models are all trained on either licensed content or royalty-free video content, not by scraping the web. Adobe also introduced enterprise tools such as Dubbing and Lip Sync for video translation and Bulk Create for efficient image editing.
As with any generative AI tool, judicious use and oversight of Firefly Video capabilities will be extremely important to ensuring responsible use. Organizations will need to set policies around the generation of content, and will be able to leverage the transparency tools provided through Content Credentials. - Driving Content Creation at Scale: Frame.io has been enhanced to streamline collaboration for creatives across video, photography, and design, with native support for Adobe file formats and new integration with Lightroom. In addition, camera makers Canon, Nikon, and Leica have joined the Frame.io Camera to Cloud ecosystem.
GenStudio for Performance Marketing was also announced at Adobe Max. It is a new generative AI-powered application within its existing Adobe GenStudio content supply chain solution that optimizes the entire process of planning, creating, managing, activating, and measuring content for marketing campaigns and personalized customer experiences. - Adobe Express: Adobe also announced new enterprise capabilities designed to help employees create and approve assets within the Express application, helping marketing, HR, sales, and communications teams to create on-brand assets and launch campaigns quickly.
Adobe MAX also included a preview of Project Neo, which will enable the creation of 3D artwork with more control and flexibility, via intuitive controls. This will enable creatives who are familiar with 2D creation in Illustrator to easily move into the 3D world.
All told, I was impressed with the features that Adobe announced at AdobeMAX this year, and its continuing messaging around AI safety, IP protection, and creators’ rights. It is no secret that other competitors have been inching their way over to the enterprise market. Adobe needs to continue to innovate in order to demonstrate that their offerings are worth the price premium.
Furthermore, Adobe is continuing to leverage its position as a commercially safe vendor for generated content, due to its practice of only training its AI models on licensed and safe content.
What to Watch:
- Can Adobe continue to innovate at its current pace? Adobe has done a great job of leveling up its feature set and capabilities with its rivals such as Canva and Figma, but needs to continue to bring the innovations to market that its creative user base are requesting.
- Adobe made a point of recognizing its core customer base of creatives and needs to continue to message them, particularly around creators’ IP rights and compensation, AI training policies, and ensuring they have a voice in both how their content is used for training AI models and what features are implemented in the platform.
- Adobe still has the high ground with respect to content safety and AI safety, and I believe they will continue to hammer home the message that they are uniquely positioned to serve large enterprise customers.
- Questions remain about how gen AI will be used from a creativity perspective: will generative AI be used to simply create scale by creating variations on existing ideas, or will it be used for idea generation? The latter option may introduce a host of issues that many organizations may not yet be ready to address.
You can read the full press release at Adobe’s website detailing all of the key announcements.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.