Adobe continues to inextricably tie the future of its products to AI. On Wednesday, the company shared its vision for bringing agentic AI to all of its software, including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Creative Cloud. Adobe says that the point of adding AI is to “give people more control and free them to spend more time on the work they love.”
Here are all the ways that Adobe plans to bring agentic AI to its most popular tools:
- Adobe Acrobat: Acrobat AI Assistant is already available in Adobe’s PDF file management software, but there’s more to come. Adobe will soon allow users to create custom AI agents that can be assigned specific roles, such as sales assistants or academic tutors.
- Adobe Express: Adobe is building an agent for its all-in-one content creation tool “that acts as a creative partner across every stage of the creation process.”
- Creative Cloud: Adobe says that customers now generate over a billion Firefly assets each month, and most of them do so in Creative Cloud apps. In the future, Adobe wants to make it possible to “[offload] tedious tasks to an agent” while you work.
- Photoshop: During MAX London this month, Adobe plans to debut a new Actions panel for Photoshop, which it called “the foundation of what will become our first creative agent.” The agent will not only be able to offer context-based suggestions while you edit your photo, but it can also take action for you with a single click. Other potential use cases include teaching you tools in Photoshop and performing repetitive tasks for you.
- Premiere Pro: For its video editing software, Adobe is devising “agents that understand all your media and that you can direct to take actions like developing a rough cut.” Adobe sees a future in which filmmakers use AI in Premiere Pro to “refine shot choices, craft rough cuts, assist with color, help mix audio, and more.”
Some of this sounds more aspirational than concrete, especially when the company tells you to “imagine” its software performing these functions. Nevertheless, it’s only a matter of time before AI agents begin to appear in virtually every program we use.
At the very least, Adobe continues to stress that AI cannot replace human creativity.
Adobe has a fine line to walk, as its software is used by countless artists around the world. That said, it is not feasible for a software company to ignore AI, lest it risk being left behind. However, many of the people that Adobe wants to push these AI agents on are the ones worried about AI taking their jobs or upending the industries in which they work.
“AI agents are not creative, but they can empower people,” Adobe says, “enabling individuals to unlock insights and create content that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to and enabling creative professionals to scale and amplify their impact more than ever.”
