Adobe’s Firefly generative AI tools are now widely available

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Photoshop’s Generative Fill tool is finally available outside of the beta app. | Image: Adobe

Following several months of beta testing, Adobe has announced that its Firefly generative AI model is now commercially available across Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Express, and Adobe Experience Cloud.

That means the Firefly-powered workflows that have so far been limited to the beta versions of Adobe’s apps — like Illustrator’s vector recoloring, Express text-to-image effects, and Photoshop’s Generative Fill tools — are now generally available to most users (though there are some regional restrictions in countries with strict AI laws like China). Adobe is also launching a standalone Firefly web app that will allow users to explore some of its generative capabilities without subscribing to specific Adobe Creative Suite applications. Adobe Express Premium and the Firefly web app will be included as part of a paid Creative Cloud subscription plan.

Image: Adobe

Photoshop’s Firefly-powered Generative Fill tool proved to be especially popular when it hit beta earlier this year.

Adobe Firefly for Enterprise is also now generally available. This could be of particular interest to businesses looking for a commercially safe generative AI model since Adobe trained Firefly on Adobe Stock and public domain content that’s no longer beholden to copyright. Adobe says it’s also developing ways for customers to customize Firefly models with their own assets to generate custom content specific to their brand.

All content generated using a Firefly-powered feature includes Content Credentials — a digital “nutrition label” backed by the Content Authenticity Initiative that attaches attribution metadata and identifies an image as being AI-generated. The label displays information like the asset’s name, creation date, what tools made it, and any edits made. Adobe is one of 15 companies that have pledged to the White House to develop tech that will identify AI-generated images and share safety data to promote responsible use of generative AI.

Image: Adobe

Firefly in Adobe Express allows users to generate text art or images from text prompts that’s commercially safe to use for businesses.

To help manage the compute demand (and the costs associated with generative AI), Adobe is also introducing a new credit-based system that users can “cash in” to access the fastest Firefly-powered workflows. The Firefly web app, Express Premium, and Creative Cloud paid plans will include a monthly allocation of Generative Credits starting today, with all-app Creative Cloud subscribers receiving 1,000 credits per month.

Users can still generate Firefly content if they exceed their credit limit, though the experience will be slower. Free plans for supported apps will also include a credit allocation (subject to the app), but this is a hard limit and will require customers to purchase additional credits if they’re used up before the monthly reset. Customers can buy additional Firefly Generative Credit subscription packs starting at $4.99.

Adobe is also introducing a new annual bonus scheme that will be paid out to Adobe Stock contributors who allow their stock submissions to be used to train Adobe’s AI models. The payout will “vary by stock contributor,” depending on how often they contribute stock and how often it is licensed, and will be paid on top of existing stock royalties payments. While Adobe wouldn’t share a ballpark figure, it confirmed to The Verge that the amount is “meaningful.”

Adobe hasn’t confirmed when it will be launching its Stock Contributor Bonus scheme, but it may help to soothe some of the tensions between the company and creatives who want to be compensated for AI being trained on their work. It isn’t too dissimilar to what’s already being requested in copyright disputes between other AI providers and creatives who are angry about their work training AI models without consent.