Adobe has announced that it’s beginning to roll out Firefly to enterprise Creative Cloud users. For those unfamiliar, Firefly is Adobe’s generative AI engine. It was previously launched as a standalone tool for creative pros, brand marketers, and other personas to start generating AI-fueled visual assets.
But as we examined, at the time, the real magic will come with direct integrations across the Creative Cloud – everything from Photoshop to Illustrator. There, it will be ingrained into the familiar workflows of ubiquitous software, making it more effective and convenient to streamline creative production.
This will play out as creative pros tap into Firefly’s generative AI capabilities on several levels. They can use it to automate and expedite rote parts of image generation (think: textures & backgrounds). Or they can simply use it for inspiration as a sort of storyboarding process for conceptual ideation.
Notably, AI won’t just elevate the Creative Cloud in these ways but the reverse could happen. In other words, Adobe will be a vessel for AI, accelerating its adoption by bringing it to millions of pros through the ubiquitous creative cloud. Those pros include brand marketers and SMBs (more on that in a bit).
Creative Range
Besides ubiquity and product synergies, another thing that makes Adobe a good candidate for AI integrations is licensing. In fact, one of many contentious issues hanging over all the generative AI buzz is how intellectual property will work when elements of licensed art is ingested by AI engines.
Adobe can sidestep that because of one key factor: Adobe Stock. Like Google and its image index, this gives Adobe a significant leg up in terms of AI training sets. This is what trains a given generative AI engine to learn specific visual elements and styles, which are then activated by keyword prompts.
But Adobe has an advantage here that Google doesn’t have: It owns all those images. This lets the company sidestep a looming legal threat facing other AI players. To be fair, Adobe Stock is a smaller image database than Google Images, which will limit the stylistic range that Firefly can accomplish.
But this is a tradeoff between extensive and commercially safe. And considering that Adobe’s biggest clients are risk-averse brands, they will choose the latter any day. Avoiding litigation and IP infringement comes before matters of creative range. This factor alone gives Firefly a good product/market fit.
Still, to avoid further IP infringement, Adobe is offering artists who participate in Adobe Stock to tag their images with a “do not train” indicator so that they become ineligible for AI training sets. And image elements that are used in generative AI will include royalties for original creators in Adobe Stock.
Disruptors & Disruptees
Backing up, why are Adobe’s AI moves important for the world of digital marketing, especially SMBs? In short, one of generative AI’s primary use cases will be brand marketing. And like most emerging tech, that will start with larger brands before gradually moving down market. We’ve seen this movie before.
In fact, during Episode 3 of Localogy’s This Week in Local podcast, we discussed the beneficiaries and disrupted parties of the hot (and then new) generative AI trend. Disrupted parties include stock image libraries used in brand marketing. And potential beneficiaries include brand marketers themselves.
The thought is that brand marketing requires visual assets, such as the corporate/generic and product-centric stock images seen throughout business websites. Generative AI can be used to create custom imagery or at least be a part of the workflow, such as inspiration and storyboarding as noted.
There’s no better company to lean into all the above than Adobe. In fact, it’s a potential beneficiary and disruptee, given Adobe Stock. Here, it’s choosing to proactively lean into AI, rather than let an innovator’s dilemma force it to lose ground. That’s a power move, and we project it will pay off.
