Adobe's new AI Photoshop tool could save photographers hours of editing time by instantly extending images and adding new elements
- Adobe has launched a generative AI tool into Photoshop for the first time.
- Generative Fill can add or remove elements from a picture instantly or extend a picture from a text prompt.
Adobe Photoshop is joining the generative artificial intelligence boom ignited by OpenAI's popular ChatGPT.
The company announced its new "Generative Fill" tool in a blog post on Tuesday. The tool can change a photo's sky from night to day, or as Adobe demonstrated, swap a lasso out for some pasta using a text prompt.
The company said the tool is now available for Photoshop subscribers in a beta version. The blog post outlines the basics of its new suite of AI tools, called "Firefly," along with more than 20 example images of how the Generative Fill tool can quickly add or remove details from pictures.
The new tools will allow Photoshop users to complete tasks that previously could have taken hours for even advanced photo editors in seconds, the post states. As a play on the film genre of "spaghetti western," Adobe displayed a simple version of what the Generative Fill feature can do, demonstrating how a cowboy's lasso can be swapped out for similarly shaped spaghetti.
Pam Clark, vice president of Photoshop product management and product strategy, said in a blog post that Firefly is Adobe's most successful beta testing ever, and said users have generated "over 100 million assets" in the six weeks since the AI tools were launched. She said bringing the capabilities of AI image creation and editing into Photoshop is an "incredible new capability" for creators.
The new Photoshop tools can add, remove, or replace a specific element in a picture, like the edits made to the picture of the stones in the grass above, but it can also extend a picture based on a text prompt given by the user:
While the new tools aren't supposed to be used for commercial use while in the beta, Adobe said the images should be free of copyright issues once the Generative Fill features are released to all Photoshop users by the end of the year. Adobe's Firefly generative AI was trained on Adobe's own library of stock images, as well as other licensed and public domain images.
AI image generators have risen in popularity and quality along with generative text chatbots like ChatGPT in recent months, but disputes over copyrighted images being used have also led to lawsuits.
The edits Generative Fill makes aren't always perfect, showcased by examples created by a writer for The Verge. But as with other photo editing services like those announced by Google earlier this month, the technology is designed to learn and improve over time. Google recently announced similar features and other AI upgrades at its I/O developer conference, including the ability to expand existing images with new AI-generated portions, which are set to be opened to select users later this year.
Take a look at some more examples of what Photoshop's new Generative Fill tool is capable of:
