Wrap up of Adobe MAX 2024: AI, Everywhere! 

We were in the mix at Adobe MAX London on 23 April, 2024, and AI was again the star of the show! 

CI HUB attended Adobe MAX London 2024 as a Platinum Sponsor 

As ever, this event was not one to miss, but if you couldn’t make it, then check out our key takeaways from Adobe’s latest announcements below. Thank you again to everyone who came by our booth to talk – and of course if you want to follow up with us, just reach out to myself, Andy, Gerd or Temor! 

But first, you can check out our live session on the Adobe MAX London: Working with Your Digital Assets Ecosystem to Share Your Brand.

Firefly comes to... well, everywhere! 

The biggest keynote announcement from Adobe is they are betting heavily on integrating Generative AI in every one of their apps and tools.  

From Photoshop and Lightroom to Premier Pro, Adobe Express and more, Adobe aims to lower the barrier of entry for design to everyone, allowing users to focus on creativity, while letting the AI do the legwork. 

And people are already making heavy use of it! Adobe revealed that the Firefly Image Model 2 has already created over 7 billion images. Meanwhile the beta version of Firefly Image 3 Foundation Model was released, and was shown to create far more detail facial features, and a much more natural style than earlier versions. 

Other new features included improved image creation from text prompts, and the ability to create new works based on image prompts uploaded. This is another exciting way in which artists can introduce their original creativity back into the process. 

Staying on Brand with Generative AI 

Given the huge push towards AI, it’s no surprise that Adobe is taking concerns of brand safety extremely seriously. Commercial Safety is paramount, after all, it takes only one team member to misuse an AI tool and start generative off-brand or copyright-infringing content.  

This is why Adobe, along with many other providers, are working to create GenAI tools which can be trained on a company’s own brand guidelines, and using existing branded materials. In this way, companies will be able to scale their content production – without straying from the boundaries of their brand. 

Flagging AI Generated Content By Design 

Relating to security and the wider question of trust, a significant announcement was that new content created with generative AI will include labelling that indicates it is computer generated. This is in line with Meta, and OpenAI who have recently announced similar labeling systems to ensure the integrity of what we see online,  

Taking the legwork out of localization 

Another notable presentation talked about how GenAi will soon take the legwork out of localizing campaigns across multiple regions. Using the example of a Black Friday campaign, Adobe showed how Firefly could be used to generate multiple versions of ads in dozens of different languages and optimized for hundreds of platforms. Putting this into action, they predicted that this innovation could bring 7 weeks of work down to only 5 days. 

New bells and whistles for your favourite apps 

Want to know what’s coming next for your Adobe app of choice? Here’s our quick rundown of some key features: 

Photoshop 

1. Firefly Image 3 Foundation Model 

2. Fill and Expand functions: using GenAI to fill gaps and expand images beyond their borders 

3. Remove background and generate background features 

4. A new fonts panel 

5. AI quick removal tool 

6. AI masking for changing individual items such as clothes 

7. AI lens blur in the camera filter for checking the image depth and focal range. 

8. Generative fills for blending two images  

9. ‘Generate similar’ option 

10. Image generation based on reference images 

11. An Adjustment brush tool 

12. Sharable adjustment presets to help you brand an image. 

Express 

1. Add music with stock audio 

2. Create multiple social media assets in a click 

3. Generate animated fills for video 

4. Direct text translation  

5. Background removal, including for video 

6. Create, schedule and push all content from mobile 

7. All of these features are also available on mobile! 

Premier Pro 

1. The ability to add and remove images with Gen AI will also be added for video, a huge step forward, and one of the most impressive features presented during the event. 

A few sneak peaks for ‘removing distractions’ 

If you’ve got this far, we can share that Adobe are working on a new ‘distraction selection’ tool for a future release. Using two examples from the National Gallery steps and the Coliseum, they were able to remove all the people within the images en masse with a simple lasso removal tool! 

Closing thoughts 

Although this year’s event was heavily AI focused, it was clear from our discussions with attendees that humans are still very much at the center of design. New innovations can lighten their load, but nothing replaces the originality of the creator... or not yet at least! 

Thank you again to everyone who attended our lively CI HUB talk! We had enough attention that this year, we decided to give greater space for a Q&A session, and were delighted to hear the response from everyone. 

Our brand also connected strongly, and it was great to see that how many of our giveaway luggage tags really hit the spot with designers looking for tools like ours that give them more time for their vacations. If you want one for yourself, you’ll have to catch us at one of our upcoming events!