Adobe’s Firefly is asked to create the letter N. Firefly will compete with Midjourney, Dall-e, and others. It will be included with Illustrator, Photoshop and Adobe Express. (Source: Adobe)

 Firefly From Adobe to Take on Image Generators Midjourney, Dall-e with Original Art

The recent flood of chatbot technology is being seen and experienced by just about everyone. And whether you realize it or not you have probably already been interacting with several chatbot algorithms each day. But problems are rising and alarms are ringing regarding this tech and how it is being used in a text, in voice deceptions, in art creations and so much more. Not all of it is positive in nature.

Dall-E 2. Stable Diffusion. Midjourney. These tools all use generative AI to create images based on any text description you can dream up. They’re astounding. But the stuff they churn out can be more fascinatingly weird than wonderful. They’re also provoking ire (and, in the case of Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, legal pushback from artists who don’t like the idea of AI taking their jobs, being trained on their work, and even mimicking their style.

An article by Harry Mccracken on fastcompany.com says that another big tech player is entering the chatbot universe which is currently being created. Enter Adobe, the longtime leader in digital-imagery software. Like everyone else in the business of computing, it has embraced the generative AI boom. But as a company whose whole reputation rests on helping creative people produce high-quality results, it also has more to lose than a startup.

Adobe’s Firefly

At a conference in Las Vegas recently, the Adobe team introduced what they are calling Firefly. Debuting as a beta web-based service, it will also be integrated into Photoshop, Illustrator and Adobe Express (and, eventually, appear in all relevant Adobe products).

“We’ve been talking to a lot to our customers, everyone from the creative pro to the enterprise to the creative communicator, about what they think about [generative AI],” says Ely Greenfield, who is an Adobe CTO for digital media.  “And we think it can be incredibly empowering for them.”

Users are having such creative fun with these platforms but they can get hard to put down. While typing stream-of-consciousness prompts into existing tools, such as Dall-E, is loads of fun, it can get in the way of actual work. And it tends to restrict human creativity because it is just so good. But is that good for us humans?

Adobe gave Firefly an interface that emphasizes workday productivity. Along with typing in a free-form request, such as “highly detailed llama,” you can click on thumbnails to specify elements, such as the desired content type (Photo, Graphic, Art), style (Synthwave, Palette Knife, Layered Paper, and beyond), and lighting (such as “dramatic”). There’s also a typography option that lets you request items, such as, “The letter N made from green and red moss.”

Adobe says Firefly is just the first in a line of products they have planned to release. Already in the works: applications of the tech for video, 3D, and—since the company is a major player in marketing technology—ad copy.

Even if Adobe isn’t one of the first tech giants that spring to mind first when you think about AI’s transformative potential, the long-term impact on its sprawling portfolio of offerings could be just as profound.

read more at fastcompany.com