Adobe

That’s according to internal company messages obtained by Business Insider, regarding frustration among staffers over how Adobe handled the controversy surrounding a recent Terms of Service update.

Adobe has since released a blog to address concerns about AI training and content ownership, but its employees reportedly think greater transparency is needed.

“If our goal is truly to prioritize our users’ best interests (which, to be honest, I sometimes question), it’s astonishing how poor our communication can be.”

Native Arm64 versions of Photoshop, Lightroom, Firefly, and Express are available starting today, Adobe announced at the Surface event going on in Richmond right now. Illustrator and Premiere Pro won’t be far behind with June arrivals.

New Copilot Plus laptops and tablets with the architecture will be able to run the apps as soon as they arrive.

The third generation of Firefly generative AI — which Adobe claims can provide more accurate and photorealistic results than its predecessor — can be accessed via the Firefly web app.

This includes the Structure Reference and Style Reference tools in the Text to Image module, and a new Generative Expand feature for increasing the aspect ratio of images in the Generative Fill module.

As we saw in the beta release this new version of Adobe Express packs the same creative, editing, and generative AI features that desktop users have into an iOS and Android app.

It’s free to use, but to access Firefly and the full suite of editing tools you’ll need a $10 per month Premium membership.

Adobe calls its Firefly model “commercially safe” because it’s trained on Adobe’s stock library. However, Bloomberg reports that around 5 percent of the images in its training database are actually generated by other AI models.

Kate Middleton is now claiming she likes to dabble in photo editing, just like those of us who don’t have a large professional staff employed just to maintain one’s image.

I guess we’re supposed to infer she edited yesterday’s badly ‘shopped photo herself, and if that’s the case, there’s a few Photoshop tutorials I can point her towards.

First, Adobe’s embrace of AI though Firefly made its stock shoot up. Then, AI didn’t add enough to its bottom line for investors, and OpenAI’s Sora tanked Adobe’s stock price.

Investors don’t really know how to view AI, and 2024 may be when reality sets in. Adobe’s first quarter earnings are expected next week.

That’s according to a new Bloomberg report, detailing how Adobe concentrated its efforts to build Firefly, the company’s own “commercially safe” generative AI model used in tools like Photoshop, following the success of rival tools like Midjourney.

Analysts now anticipate that Adobe may be one of the first big tech companies to actually profit from AI. Meanwhile, Adobe Stock contributors who helped train Firefly, potentially unknowingly, receive annual payouts that are as low as $70.

Available in english for both free and premium Adobe Express users, the AI-powered TikTok Creative Assistant add-on can write scripts and provide insights into what topics and hashtags are trending on the video-sharing platform, alongside design templates and editing features like the free TikTok video creator.

Once a video has been produced, users can schedule or publish content to TikTok without leaving the Express platform.

Remember the animated fabric that Adobe unveiled at its MAX 2023 event? Well, now it’s been used in an actual, wearable garment by Christian Cowan.

The Primrose dress was revealed at the designer’s show at New York Fashion Week, created using 1,264 laser-cut polymer dispersed liquid crystal “petals.” The fact it happens to look like badass scale mail is just a happy bonus.

9News Melbourne aired the altered image shown below of a member of Victoria’s Parliament, Georgie Purcell.

In a statement, 9News director Hugh Nailon said that when the picture was resized, “automation by Photoshop created an image that was not consistent with the original.” However, Adobe maintains (via NYT and the Guardian) “Any changes to this image would have required human intervention and approval.”

So what do you think happened?

According to Bloomberg, Adobe won’t be reviving its XD software that was effectively killed during the company’s failed attempt to acquire Figma’s similar set of product design tools. Adobe says it’s open to finding new product design partners and has “no plans to further invest” in XD, though support for existing users is still available.

Adobe doesn’t say, but it could develop new software entirely, like the unnamed whiteboarding project it previously canceled.

It turns out the “third-party vendor” Wacom sourced its suspicious campaign imagery from is likely Adobe Stock, though none of the now-deleted stock images were tagged as AI-generated.

It’s little wonder artists feel betrayed if the creative-focused companies that have supported them for decades can’t even identify poor-quality AI images from authentic human-made art.