Adobe Firefly Brings Generative AI Fill To Photoshop

Removing flaws from pictures in Adobe Photoshop has always been tedious, usually requiring a good chunk of time messing around with layers, the clone brush, and the eraser tool to get things perfect. Now, Adobe announced that through the help of its generative AI imaging tool Firefly, it has added Generative Fill. The company touts the new AI functionality as the "world's first co-pilot in creative and design workflows." Instead of using tools to add or remove parts of a picture, you can use text prompts to accomplish the same task.

The tool is still in beta testing, with Adobe saying it should roll out during the second half of this year. According to Adobe, the Firefly AI is trained on Adobe Stock's library of images. This means the AI is not trained on copywritten material besides what Adobe owns. The functionality will also be available as a web tool.

The press release from Adobe says it's magic. But in practice, prompting the AI to say, remove a person in the background will create a layer over the image with the AI-generated changes applied and keep the original image intact. Adobe says this can drastically speed up workflows, and it has the potential to eliminate the more annoying aspects of Photoshop and make it a more streamlined process.

It's worth saying that experts in Photoshop probably don't need to worry a ton about losing their jobs just yet, as judging by the sample images, it seems like the tool will be best suited for stylistic changes and generally cleaning up images. However, it can swap out backgrounds and add new parts to a Photoshop composition. The wholly AI-generated images still feature the telltale weirdness of all AI art. It likely can't create a convincing image of something like Abraham Lincoln driving a Lamborghini or anything requiring a real creative effort, but we'd love to see it try.