Exclusive: Adobe brings agentic AI to Firefly, with Claude next
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An example of the new AI assistant in Adobe Firefly. Image: Adobe
Adobe on Monday began public testing of an agentic AI assistant inside Firefly and is building a lighter-weight version that can work inside chatbots, starting with Anthropic's Claude, company executives told Axios.
Why it matters: The move comes as chatbots are increasingly able to automate tasks that once required dedicated design tools.
Driving the news: Adobe is launching a public beta for the conversational agent in Firefly that it announced last week.
- The tool can handle complex, multistep actions and draw on tools from Adobe apps including Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Express and Premiere.
- Adobe is also working to bring a lighter-weight version of the assistant into third-party chatbots, starting with Claude. Features will depend on what actions each chatbot supports.
- The company continues to expand the number of third-party AI engines that work inside its apps, adding OpenAI's improved image model last week.
How it works: Adobe's creative agent can pull from across the company's apps and perform actions that would otherwise require opening multiple programs.
Catch up quick: Adobe has been adding AI tools to its own apps while also partnering with outside AI companies.
- Earlier chatbot integrations with ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot focused on bringing in features from a specific app, such as Acrobat or Photoshop.
What they're saying: David Wadhwani, the president of Adobe's creativity and productivity business, told Axios that allowing people to access Adobe tools within others' chatbots could attract new customers.
- "I think some people are taking a very shallow view of what you should be able to do in these third-party applications," Wadhwani said.
- "Access to creativity is going to explode," he said. "We want to be the company that catalyzes that."
The big picture: Adobe's move points to a larger trend, where generative AI is used not just to create images or video, but also to become a part of the interface, with people describing the specific actions for software to take.
- "Rather than having you have to, like, flip every pixel, we give you higher and higher level tools that allow you to express your creative intent," Ely Greenfield, chief technology officer of Adobe's creative products business, said in a recent interview.
- "Gen AI is a big step in that direction. Agentic is a big step in that direction."
What we're watching: The likely next step will be adding a similar agentic assistant into each of Adobe's apps. Greenfield said that is a priority but didn't offer a timeframe.
- Meanwhile, Wadhwani said Adobe has other new AI features that will be enabled soon.
- "We have a lot of stuff coming out in the next six, seven weeks," he said.
