Adobe’s conversational AI agent is a mediocre design intern

AI image tools rarely make me feel like I’m part of the creative process. They are, afterall, mostly designed so that people with no design experience can type in a few words and get back a usable result. So I was pleasantly surprised by Adobe’s latest take on an AI image assistant: it’s a bot designed to take away some busywork, while still granting you creative control. Unlike AI generators that are specifically designed to make and edit images or video, Adobe’s Firefly AI Assistant , which I’ve been testing in beta, is more like a multitasking middleman that can operate Adobe’s design apps for you. On its website, Adobe says that you can just “tell Firefly AI Assistant (beta) what you need, and it will use tools from apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and more to complete multistep projects in moments.” The user interface looks like a typical chatbot. There’s a text box you can type prompts into, and a plus symbol for uploading media files. It doesn’t use the actual Adobe apps on your computer, but it has access to common capabilities like masking, object detection, and image generation. The AI assistant is designed to be conversational, so you can ask the chatbot to “make this photo more colorful,” and it’ll do so while explaining its actions. 1/3 Here’s an unedited photo of myself that I used for testing. I intentionally chose a shot with unusual lighting. Image: Jess Weatherbed / The Verge Photo edits and illustrations completed by Adobe’s AI are convincing at a glance. …