Adobe's creative agent now runs as a per-app specialist inside Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign and Frame.io, with new agentic skills landing in Firefly too.
Adobe continues to double down on its AI strategy, and has expanded its creative agent across Firefly and Creative Cloud, adding agentic capabilities to Firefly and rolling out AI Assistants into Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io. The company is also extending its tools to third-party platforms including ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Google Gemini, and Slack.
What is interesting is that the company isn’t taking a cookie-cutter approach to its implementation of AI tools, with the AI Assistant operating as a per-app specialist across the different packages.
That means that in Premiere it handles set-up work such as sorting assets into bins, batch renaming clips, identifying interview questions, adding markers and assembling a starting cut. In Photoshop it works on described outcomes such as swapping backgrounds, resizing assets per platform and organizing layers. In Illustrator it runs multi-step jobs such as generating 50 versioned files from a spreadsheet, reorganizing layers and running pre-flight checks for color-mode errors or missing fonts. In InDesign it applies updates across layouts including copy, styling and print-readiness checks. In Frame.io it organizes shoot assets, surfaces feedback across revisions and generates B-roll.
You get the picture. AI Assistant is also in private beta in After Effects, but as yet no details of new capabilities have been released.
For all its app specialism, AI Assistant in Firefly brings tools from across Creative Cloud into a new single conversational interface. New creative skills and tools available as a result include:
AI Assistant in Firefly also adds customization upgrades that surface assets described in natural language and learn preferences over time, plus the ability to invite collaborators to review work before publishing.
The company is also previewing an upgraded Firefly creative AI studio experience, now in private beta, that connects generation and editing in one space. It adds Elements, which saves characters, locations and objects for reuse across generations, and Projects, which keeps assets, generations and creative context organized across Firefly and Creative Cloud.
Adobe has had a slightly rocky time of it on the Nasdaq lately, but that seems to be more about investors reacting to C-level management changes than anything to do with its AI strategy. Overall revenue is up, with a record Q2 of $6.62 billion, and projections are good. Specific AI-related recurring revenue has more than tripled year over year to over $500 million, suggesting the strategy is already paying its way.
There is a line with AI to be walked here, and the company seems to be managing it. Its latest Creators' Toolkit Report states that 75% of more than 16,000 creatives surveyed describe creative AI as integrated or essential to their work, but 85% also say the final creative decision should remain theirs. That's precisely the workflow that AI assistants are designed for.
The latest AI Assistant in Firefly (beta) capabilities are available today in the Firefly web app. The upgraded Firefly creative AI studio experience, including Elements and Projects, is in private beta via a waitlist at firefly.adobe.com/studio. AI Assistant is available today in public beta across Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, Frame.io and InDesign, and in private beta in After Effects.