Adobe Adds Generative AI Features to Photoshop

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence in the tech world, it was only a matter of time before Photoshop jumped on the bandwagon. Adobe has just announced that they will be introducing a new feature called Generative Fill in their widely-known photo editing software later this year. Promising a "magical new way of working," this feature, powered by Firefly, allows users to effortlessly add, remove, and expand visual content based on text prompts. Ashley Still, Senior Vice President of Digital Media at Adobe, explains that Generative Fill combines the speed and simplicity of generative AI with the power and precision of Photoshop, enabling users to bring their visions to life at the speed of their imagination.

Generative Fill in Adobe works similarly to DALL-E 2's inpainting (AI-generated content within specific image areas) and outpainting (AI-created content expanding image boundaries). For instance, if you want to incorporate a surreal sky effect into a photo, you can simply select the desired area and enter a text prompt like "surreal sky with unique colors." If you wish to expand the photo's width, you can select the surrounding area and instruct it to widen the scene.

Adobe assures that the new feature seamlessly adapts to the perspective, lighting, and style of the original image, allowing for drastic alterations with minimal effort. The company has even released a marketing video showcasing different AI-generated results for various text prompts.

To address ethical concerns and distinguish its AI work, Adobe clarifies that the current model is trained exclusively on images from Adobe Stock and "other public domain content without copyright restrictions."

Additionally, as part of the Adobe Content Credentials initiative, AI-generated images created in Photoshop will be encoded with an invisible digital signature, indicating whether they are the product of human creativity or AI algorithms. As generative AI blurs the line between organic and algorithmic creations, and artists worry about potential machine plagiarism, Adobe's commitment to transparent interaction appears promising.

Generative Fill will be available in the beta version of Photoshop for desktop starting today, and Adobe plans for it to be broadly accessible in the second half of 2023. Furthermore, Generative Fill is already accessible as a module in the Firefly beta version of the web application.