Adobe doubled down on generative artificial intelligence on Monday, unveiling its long-awaited AI video generator and a suite of AI-powered tools for creatives and marketers, as it competes with tech giants and startups like OpenAI, Google, Meta and Runway to tap booming demand for the technology.
The new features, launching in beta online or within Adobe’s video-editing software like Premiere Pro, empower users to edit and extend footage and to create video from text and image prompts. Adobe said the tools focus on meeting the needs of creative professionals and can be used to help make fine-grained tweaks, smooth out edits and make other adjustments without the need to reshoot footage.
“We’re giving the creative community a powerful new brush to paint the world by putting unprecedented power, precision and creative control in their hands,” said Adobe president of digital media David Wadhwani.
Adobe also unveiled ‘GenStudio for Performance Marketing’, an AI-powered platform for ad creation. The platform “empowers brands and agencies to accelerate the delivery of global advertising and marketing campaigns” by automating much of the creation process. In the future, Adobe said users will be able to publish content directly to social media platforms including Meta, TikTok and Snap, though it did not specify when this would be available.
A video generator to rival OpenAI, Google and Meta
The generative AI tools are powered by Adobe’s ‘Firefly Video Model’, a highly anticipated feature first teased earlier this year. It expands the software giant’s Firefly stable of generative AI models, which already includes products for images, vector graphics and design.
The launch, which coincided with the company’s annual creativity summit, Adobe MAX, marks the first time a major software company has made a generative AI video product widely available to the public. It will compete with products from AI heavyweights like OpenAI’s Sora, Meta’s MovieGen and Google’s Veo, which have been announced but not publicly released, as well as well-funded startups like Runway.
“Commercially Safe” AI
In an effort to stand out in the competitive generative AI landscape, Adobe has focused on building “commercially safe” AI models trained on licensed content that will be safe for brands to use.
Vast amounts of data like text, audio, images or video are required to train generative AI models and many leading developers like OpenAI, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Stability AI and Runway are facing copyright lawsuits from publishers. The litigation has made many brands wary of using AI generated content for commercial purposes, fears Adobe hopes its products address.
Adobe says more than 13 billion images have been generated with Firefly since it launched last year.
While Adobe doesn’t charge for its AI tools beyond the standard subscription fees for its software, it said the particularly high costs of generating video may require different pricing models.