Adobe Express now has AI-powered features to take on Canva

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Adobe Express is rolling out its latest AI-powered features for general use. | Image: Adobe

Following several months in beta, Adobe is now rolling out AI-powered features to Adobe Express, its cloud-based all-in-one design platform, courtesy of the company’s Firefly generative AI model. Designed to make content creation more accessible for those without professional design experience, Adobe Express (formerly known as Adobe Spark) resembles similar design platforms like Canva and Microsoft Designer — providing quick and easy templates for users to create social graphics and posters, edit videos, decorate PDFs, and more.

Users can now access the latest version of Express on desktop web for free, with plans to roll out the latest version to mobile “soon.” The Adobe Express Premium plan — a $9.99 monthly subscription that unlocks additional premium features and assets — is included at no extra cost for existing Creative Cloud members. An Adobe Express enterprise tier is also available for larger teams that need collaborative workflows.

Image: Adobe

Express users can now generate custom text and image effects to use in marketing materials alongside the app's library of existing assets.

Adobe Express itself has been available since 2021, but its generative AI features specifically have been in development since June earlier this year. With this latest release, Express users can now generate custom images and text effects using text prompts in over 100 languages. Quick actions like automatic background removal and using audio to create simple character animations are also included in the latest version of Express. You can find a full list of the new features on the Adobe website.

In many ways, it feels like Adobe Express is still playing catch-up to the Canva design app. Canva has supported AI-powered features since at least 2019 when it first introduced its automatic background removal tool, and its sheer simplicity is often a more palatable alternative to more complex image editing software like Adobe Photoshop. The generative features in Adobe Express are neat when they actually work, but they’re not in the same league as other Firefly-powered features like Photoshop Generative Fill. Still, Adobe offers some reassurances that Firefly is commercially safe for companies to use since it’s entirely trained on content that Adobe owns, which could be enough to sway some folks over to using Express instead.