Adobe Introduces Generative AI to its Photoshop Software

Digital creators are about to have access to more powerful image editing capabilities at the tip of their fingers with the new introduction of generative AI into Photoshop software.

Adobe Photoshop, which has been the software standard in many creative industries, will be getting its own flagship AI software for editing images.

The new AI integration will feature some new capabilities one of which was showcased in a demonstration by Adobe Vice President of Digital Imaging Maria Yap, in which she seamlessly integrates a dog's portrait into a larger background with the prompt "spring trees with sunshine"

The new feature called “Generative Fill” will allow users to extend an original image that was cropped in too closely with computer-generated content, or add features based on a text description. This essentially brings what could be an hour-long editing process of scouring photo archives and manually stitching together images down to just minutes.

Adobe had previously released a similar generative AI tool called Firefly but has been testing the system for some weeks as a standalone website. Now, the software company says it will add features based on it to Photoshop.

While this might be the cause of excitement for some creators, some industry experts worry that Photoshop development will cut out certain workers from creative agencies and brands as the technology becomes easier for anyone to use, while some worry about the ethical and legal concerns about artists' work being stolen to train the AI.

To address the latter, Adobe says it is rolling out some safeguards along with the new version of Photoshop, including a free, open-source tool called Content Credentials, which allows creators to attach labels to an image’s metadata verifying whether an image has been altered by AI.