Can Adobe Firefly Enhance Creativity With Ethical Generative AI?

After 6 months in beta, Adobe Firefly - Adobe’s generative AI tool - has been released for commercial use. 

While Mark Zuckerberg might have been happy to “move fast and break things” at Facebook, Adobe is taking a different approach to AI. After all, Adobe’s reputation as the trusted incumbent in the creative industries is at stake. It can’t behave like a scrappy start up.

Name recognition and Creative Cloud’s existing user base gives Firefly an edge, but to succeed it still needs to avoid the controversies that have dogged other AI generators. Firefly may share some similarities with tools like DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, but Adobe is keen to differentiate itself from its rivals.

Of course, this is not Adobe’s first foray into AI assisted design. Adobe Sensei has been improving creative workflows across Adobe’s products since 2017. Firefly builds on those capabilities by specifically focusing on generative AI models.

Adobe also has grander ambitions for its service beyond just image generation. While Firefly offers opportunities for individual creators, it is a cog in a larger machine. 

The mission is to help companies plan, create, and deliver personalised content at scale to meet real-time customer demands. This requires streamlining the content supply chain from concept to creation, to approval and delivery. 

For enterprise customers, AI’s role is to speed up workflows and create opportunities for more experimentation and iteration across Adobe's suite of products. 

But to be commercially viable Firefly needs to be commercially safe. It needs to earn the trust of Adobe’s creative and enterprise customers.

Can Adobe Be A More Ethical AI?

Adobe believes that, if done responsibly, generative AI can enhance human creativity rather than replace it.

Adobe is committed to developing generative AI responsibly, with creators at the centre. Our mission is to give creators every advantage — not just creatively, but practically. As Firefly evolves, we’ll continue to work closely with the creative community to build technology that supports and improves the creative process.

- Adobe Firefly’s Website

The company launched the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) for ethical AI development. It has also published a suite of AI policies on its website, making their ethical promise a central pillar of their messaging.

Stolen Artwork

Firefly is trained on hundreds of millions of Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content, and public domain content where copyright has expired.

Creators who opt out will be excluded from training data sets, however there is still concern that this isn’t an explicit opt-in consent instead.

To address concerns around compensating creators fairly as their work is used to develop AI that could impact future licensing, Adobe has announced royalty payments.

Adobe’s clear policy on its training data origins puts it in a strong position to answer business’ concerns over permissions and rights. The company’s confidence is backed up with an IP indemnity clause to protect enterprise customers from copyright claims resulting from their use of Firefly.

Misinformation and Deep Fakes

AI image generators can create striking fake images that seem real. On close inspection you’re certain to notice incorrect or odd details. Merged limbs, too many or few fingers, or inconsistent shadows are often the tell. However, in the heat of the moment or at a smaller scale, many people are caught out.

To tackle this, Firefly uses Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) metadata to fingerprint any images it generates. The aim is to ensure proper attribution, prevent misinformation, and enable creators to share their work transparently. The metadata includes information such as the creation tools used and details like name, date, and edits made.

Addressing Bias

A diversity of perspectives helps identify potential ethical issues that may be overlooked. Adobe has an AI Ethics Review Board composed of diverse members with varied personal and professional backgrounds. The goal of the review board is to spot and address ethical concerns proactively before feature rollout.

According to Adobe, they have made efforts to minimise the influence of bias in training data, such as ensuring that AI models do not reflect a gender bias towards male business executives. 

Despite Adobe's efforts, there are likely still problematic biases in Firefly's training data that need to be addressed. Ongoing work will be required to identify and reduce biased results that lead to issues like lack of diversity, stereotyping, and exclusion in AI generative art. 

Allowing companies to train Firefly on their brand data may also help mitigate biases, and this avenue is being explored.

What Can You Do With Firefly?

Firefly is available as a standalone web application. Some of its functions are also integrated with Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Express. However, in time the goal is to expand into vector graphics, 3D, animation, video, and more.

AI generations are currently unlimited for Creative Cloud, Adobe Firefly, Adobe Express, and Adobe Stock subscribers. However, starting November 1st 2023 Generative Credits will apply. Credits are included in Adobe’s subscription plans and reset each month. Once a user runs out they will have the option to purchase additional credits or continue on a slower rate.

Text to Image

To use Adobe Firefly, go to the website and click "Generate" in the Text to Image section. Enter a text prompt to generate 4 initial images. Firefly accepts prompts in over 100 languages.

You can tweak options like Aspect Ratio, Content Type and Content Style before generating more images. 

If you have a preference for one of the images the AI has created, you can use it as a reference image. You can then adjust your prompt, using a slider to control how much the reference image influences the output.

You need to be prepared to experiment. It can take a good deal of trial and error to get the sort of output you want. The key is to take an iterative approach and focus on refining prompts, options, and references to get what you need.

When you’re happy with your image, you can move it across to Adobe Express or download to continue working with it.

Generative Fill and Generative Expand

Generative Fill is available through the Firefly web app and Photoshop. You can use it to add, remove, and replace elements such as backgrounds and objects using text prompts. The tool works to provide contextually appropriate answers to your query and handles lighting, perspective, shadows to make it look realistic.

In Photoshop, you can also use crop to access the Generative Expand tool. 

If you’ve ever spent time trying to create enough space to overlay text using Content Aware Fill and the Clone Stamp tools, this one’s for you. If Firefly does nothing else, it is a must-have tool for web developers and social media managers who need images at a specific range of aspect ratios.

All you need to do is expand the image as required and Firefly fills in the new area you’ve created on a new layer so you have full control of the process.

However, as we’ve come to expect from AI, the results can be a bit hit and miss. Complex elements, such as human faces and hands, aren’t always rendered as 100% human. And when using Adobe’s introductory demo file, we asked it to replace the Icelandic house with a woolly mammoth and were given a set of beautifully rendered camels. Keep experimenting and see what you can get it to do.

Text Effects

In addition to generating images, Firefly offers an easy way to style text. 

For some people, this might feel like a fancier version of Word Art. However, if you’re interested in typography and 3D effects, Firefly allows you to experiment with dimensional text without using complex software.

All you need to do is go to the Text Effects section in the Firefly web app, enter your text and describe desired effects or select a style from the menu.

Use the Style menu to combine your text with different fonts, colours, and backgrounds. Shape matches how tightly the effect fits the text outline. To make your effect conform to the boundaries of the letter form, select ‘Tight’. For more creative effects that spill outside your text, select ‘Loose’.

Generative Recolour

To explore different colour palettes and combinations, you can use Adobe Firefly’s Generative Recolour option. While the tool lacks the precision you might need at final artwork stages, this provides a quick and easy way to experiment and discover new options to transform your images.

Generative Recolour is available through the Firefly web app when you upload an SVG file.

It is also an option in the Adobe Illustrator desktop app. When you select your artwork, you’re given the option to ‘Recolour’. Clicking on that brings up the Recolour Artwork dialogue box and the option for Generative Recolour is in the bottom left corner. 

You can then describe the palette you’d like to use and scroll through different options. Once you’ve selected a palette you like, you can edit the colours to get it exactly how you want.

In Development

All of this is just the beginning. Adobe has an ambitious pipeline for future developments to realise their broad ambition for AI content creation. Their plans include:

• Personalised results: generate images based on your own object or brand style.

• Text to vector: generate editable vector graphics from a description.

• Text to pattern: create seamless repeat patterns based on a description.

• Text to brush: generate brushes for Photoshop or Fresco from a description.

• Text to template: generate editable templates for assets and documents from a description.

• Sketch to image: turn a drawing into a full-colour image.

• 3D to image: create an image from a 3D scene and a text description.

The Future of Creativity?

Adobe has laid the foundations for an ethical and commercially viable AI future. The challenge now is to deliver on that immense promise.

Concerns around responsible AI development persist, but Adobe is at least making concerted efforts to proactively address the issues of its creative and enterprise customers.

By leveraging Adobe's trusted brand, integration with Creative Cloud, and a robust policy framework, Firefly is well positioned compared to other generative AI services. 

While Firefly may not yet match the capabilities of tools like Midjourney, Adobe's iterative approach looks set to close the gap over time. As capabilities expand, Firefly could become indispensable for creative tasks like ideation, prototyping and production. 

It remains to be seen whether adoption will reach the viral levels seen by consumer AI apps. But what is clear is that Firefly signals a new frontier for Adobe. One where AI acts as a collaborator rather than replacement.

The pace of AI innovation is rapid. As experts in leveraging emerging technologies, 1827 Marketing keeps pace so our clients are ahead of the curve. Book a call if you’d like to know more about how to blend content marketing expertise, marketing automation tools and AI to streamline your B2B marketing.