Adobe has announced that it is bringing generative AI to Photoshop in order to provide users with a "magical new way of working" when it comes to photo editing. The company will integrate Firefly, a family of creative AI models, into Photoshop, with the rest of its Creative Cloud portfolio to follow.

A new feature that Adobe is eager to highlight is Generative Fill, which allows users to nondestructively extend or remove content from an image using AI. In other words, the newly created content appears as an additional layer without affecting the original image. Like other generative AI tools, Generative Fill requires only a text prompt and changes can be made in seconds.

In the image above, this tool was used to overlay a car and clouds on an existing image with only a simple text prompt.

In addition to being integrated into Photoshop, Generative Fill is also available as a module in the Firefly beta version for other users who want to try it out directly on the web. As with other AI tools, it has the potential to be very useful as a means of quickly generating visual ideas based on a few text prompts. Furthermore, as users become more familiar with the system, they will be able to work with the AI to refine and improve the images they are working with.

Of course, Adobe's suite of photo and video editing software is no stranger to AI assistance. For years, the company has employed the Sensei AI system for features like Photoshop's Neural Filters. However, the arrival of Firefly will further advance the software for beginners and intermediate users.

Firefly is a multimodal model family, so it includes audio, video, and 3D modeling as well as still images.

"By integrating Firefly directly into the workflow as a creative co-pilot, Adobe is accelerating ideation, exploration, and production for all our customers," said Ashley Still, Senior Vice President of Digital Media at Adobe. Adobe is accelerating ideation, exploration, and production for all of our customers.

"Generative Fill combines the speed and ease of use of generative AI with the power and precision of Photoshop to enable our customers to bring their visions to life at the speed of their imagination.

Photoshop is not the only image generator with built-in AI currently making waves. Earlier this week, researchers from Google and the Max Planck Institute released a white paper on a new image editing tool called DragGAN. The tool uses AI to resize and redraw images with little or no photo editing experience, offering a glimpse into the future of image manipulation.