Adobe is adding an AI-powered image generator to Photoshop

CNN

By Jennifer Korn

New York (CNN) — Photoshop is about to look a little different.

Adobe on Tuesday said it’s incorporating an AI-powered image generator into Photoshop, with the goal of “dramatically accelerating” how users edit their photos.

The tool, called Firefly, allows users to add or delete elements from images with just a text prompt, according to Adobe. It can also match the lighting and style of the existing images automatically, the company said.

It’s currently available in a new Photoshop beta app. The company plans to roll the product out to all Photoshop customers by the end of the year.

Adobe’s move comes after a recent crop of AI tools have launched that can generate compelling written work and images in response to user prompts, with the potential to change how people work, create and communicate with each other.

“[N]ow that we are entering a new era of AI, the advent of generative models presents a new opportunity to take our imaging capabilities to another level,” Pam Clark, vice president of Photoshop product management and product strategy, wrote in a blog post. “Over the last few months, we have integrated this exciting new technology into Photoshop in a major step toward a more natural, intuitive, and fun way to work.”

Firefly was launched in March at the Adobe Summit as a web-only beta. It was trained on Adobe’s own collection of stock images, as well as publicly available assets. Adobe has called the tool one of its most successful beta launches ever, with more than 70 million images created in the first month.

By relying on its own image collection and media available for public use, Adobe may be able to avoid the backlash that some other AI image generator tools have faced for using a vast trove of online content as training.

In January, Getty Images sued Stability AI, the company behind popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, alleging the tech company committed copyright infringement. Getty said Stability AI copied and processed millions of its images without obtaining the proper licensing.

Stability filed a motion earlier this month to dismiss the suit.

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CNN’s Rachel Metz contributed to this report.