Adobe on Wednesday expanded its catalog with new generative artificial intelligence (AI) features and made them accessible to users. The company also announced plans to increase prices and pay contributors who contributed to developing and rolling out the AI features.
The American software company released Firefly, its collection of generative AI tools and models, with built-in Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Express, and Adobe Experience Cloud integration. The announcement follows six months of Adobe testing and adding new AI features to the platform, such as the ability to convert text into images.
Ethical and legal use of AI has been a grey area since the advent of the technology, with content creators and technology firms disputing in court over the former asking for royalties for their work being used to train AI systems. Adobe assures users and businesses that its system-generated content will be legal and safe to use.
Adobe credited content creators’ “engagement and feedback to the Firefly beta,” which inspired it to produce generative AI features designed for commercially ethical and safe use and seamlessly integrate them into existing interfaces loved by customers.
Adobe’s price plans will increase the price of its subscription products from $2 to $5 each month from November onwards.
“Starting today, Creative Cloud, Firefly, and Express paid plans now include a monthly allocation of fast; Generative Credits, which are like tokens that enable subscribers to turn a text-based prompt into image and vector content in Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Express and Firefly,” the company announced on its blog.
Adobe customers will receive “credits” for using generative AI features. Once they exhaust those credits, users can pay for more or continue using the features but at a slow speed. The company also announced plans to pay the contributors for using stock images to train the AI systems.
This year, Adobe will offer artists a one-time “contributor” bonus according to the number of images they contributed to Adobe’s stock imagery database and how many times their photos received traditional licenses from June 3, 2022, to June 3, 2023.
In the following years, Adobe will begin paying annual bonuses for the images used to train its AI models.
“We want our stock contributors to continue to contribute both for the stock market, which is paying out more than it ever has, and for the value they’re contributing to the training of these models,” said Ely Greenfield, chief technology officer for digital media at Adobe.
Earlier this year, Adobe expanded its collaboration with IBM to help companies generate content using AI. IBM Consulting will offer its consumers a portfolio of Adobe consulting services to help them “navigate the complex generative AI landscape, bringing together innovation, technology and design to digitally reinvent customer interactions,” the company said in a news release.
With this partnership, Adobe’s enterprise client will be able to interact with IBM Consulting experts, who can assist them in leveraging and implementing AI models to accelerate their designing and creative processes.