Technologies

Everything I Learned Testing Photoshop’s New Generative AI Tool

Adobe’s Firefly AI feature brings new fun and fakery to photos. It’s a huge change for image editing, though far from perfect.

Adobe is building generative AI abilities into its flagship image-editing software with a new Photoshop beta release Tuesday. The move promises to release a new torrent of creativity even as it gives us all a new reason to pause and wonder if that sensational, scary or inspirational photo you see on the internet is actually real.

In my tests, detailed below, I found the tool impressive but imperfect. Adding it directly to Photoshop is a big deal, letting creators experiment within the software tool they’re likely already using without excursions to Midjourney, Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion or other outside generative AI tools.

With Adobe’s Firefly family of generative AI technologies arriving in Photoshop, you’ll be able to let the AI fill a selected part of the image with whatever it thinks most fitting – for example, replacing road cracks with smooth pavement. You can also specify the imagery you’d like with a text prompt, such as adding a double yellow line to the road.

Firefly in Photoshop also can also expand an image, adding new scenery beyond the frame based on what’s already in the frame or what you suggest with text. Want more sky and mountains in your landscape photo? A bigger crowd at the rock concert? Photoshop will oblige, without today’s difficulties of finding source material and splicing it in.

Photoshop’s Firefly, which is scheduled to emerge from beta testing in the second half of 2023, can be powerful. In Adobe’s live demo, the tool was often able to match a photo’s tones, blend in AI-generated imagery seamlessly, infer the geometric details of perspective even in reflections and extrapolate the position of the sun from shadows and sky haze.

Such technologies have been emerging over the last year as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and OpenAI’s Dall-Ecaptured the imaginations of artists and creative pros. Now it’s built directly into the software they’re most likely to already be using, streamlining what can be a cumbersome editing process.

«It really puts the power and control of generative AI into the hands of the creator,» said Maria Yap, Adobe’s vice president of digital imaging. «You can just really have some fun. You can explore some ideas. You can ideate. You can create without ever necessarily getting into the deep tools of the product, very quickly.»

Now you’d better brace yourself for that future.

Photoshop’s Firefly AI imperfect but useful

In my testing, I frequently ran into problems, many of them likely stemming from the limited range of the training imagery. When I tried to insert a fish on a bicycle to an image, Firefly only added the bicycle. I couldn’t get Firefly to add a kraken to emerge from San Francisco Bay. A musk ox looked like a panda-moose hybrid.

Less fanciful material also presents problems. Text looks like an alien race’s script. Shadows, lighting, perspective and geometry weren’t always right.

People are hard, too. On close inspection, their faces were distorted in weird ways. Humans added into shots could be positioned too high in the frame or in otherwise unconvincingly blended in.

Still, Firefly is remarkable for what it can accomplish, particularly with landscape shots. I could add mountains, oceans, skies and hills to landscapes. A white delivery van in a night scene was appropriately yellowish to match the sodium vapor streetlights in the scene. If you don’t like the trio of results Firefly presents, you can click the «generate» button to get another batch.

Given the pace of AI developments, I expect Firefly in Photoshop will improve.

It’s hard and expensive to retrain big AI models, requiring a data center packed with expensive hardware to churn through data, sometimes taking weeks for the largest models. But Adobe plans relatively frequent updates to Firefly. «Expect [about] monthly updates for general improvements and retraining every few months in all likelihood,» Adobe product chief Scott Belsky tweeted Tuesday.

Automating image manipulation

For years, «Photoshop» hasn’t just referred to Adobe’s software. It’s also used as a verb signifying photo manipulations like slimming supermodels’ waists or hiding missile launch failures. AI tools automate not just fun and flights of fancy, but also fake images like an alleged explosion at the Pentagon or a convincingly real photo of the pope in a puffy jacket, to pick two recent examples.

With AI, expect editing techniques far more subtle than the extra smoke easily recognized as digitally added to photos of an Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006.

It’s a reflection of the double-edged sword that is generative AI. The technology is undeniably useful in many situations but also blurs the line between what is true and what is merely plausible.

For its part, Adobe tries to curtail problems. It doesn’t permit prompts to create images of many political figures and blocks you for «safety issues» if you try to create an image of black smoke in front of the White House. And its AI usage guidelines prohibit imagery involving violence, pornography and «misleading, fraudulent, or deceptive content that could lead to real-world harm,» among other categories. «We disable accounts that engage in behavior that is deceptive or harmful.»

Firefly also is designed to skip over styling prompts like that have provoked serious complaints from artists displeased to see their type of art reproduced by a data center. And it supports the Content Authenticity Initiative‘s content credentials technology that can be used to label an image as having been generated by AI.

Generative AI for photos

Adobe’s Firefly family of generative AI tools began with a website that turns a text prompt like «modern chair made up of old tires» into an image. It’s added a couple other options since, and Creative Cloud subscribers will also be able to try a lightweight version of the Photoshop interface on the Firefly site.

When OpenAI’s Dall-E brought that technology to anyone who signed up for it in 2022, it helped push generative artificial intelligence from a technological curiosity toward mainstream awareness. Now there’s plenty of worry along with the excitement as even AI creators fret about what the technology will bring now and in the more distant future.

Generative AI is a relatively new form of artificial intelligence technology. AI models can be trained to recognize patterns in vast amounts of data – in this case labeled images from Adobe’s stock art business and other licensed sources – and then to create new imagery based on that source data.

Generative AI has surged to mainstream awareness with language models used in tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, Google’s Gmail and Google Docs, and Microsoft’s Bing search engine. When it comes to generating images, Adobe employs an AI image generation technique called diffusion that’s also behind Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and Google’s Imagen.

Adobe calls Firefly for Photoshop a «co-pilot» technology, positioning it as a creative aid, not a replacement for humans. Yap acknowledges that some creators are nervous about being replaced by AI. Adobe prefers to see it as a technology that can amplify and speed up the creative process, spreading creative tools to a broader population.

«I think the democratization we’ve been going through, and having more creativity, is a positive thing for all of us,» Yap said. «This is the future of Photoshop.»

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

Technologies

Researchers Use Quantum Computer to Improve AI Predictions

A quantum computer assists an AI model with calculations that would take weeks to figure out with a normal computer.

AI models have been helping with predictions for a while now. Doctors, weather forecasters and stock brokers all use AI to try to peek into the future. Inside the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Germany, researchers have been experimenting with an AI model and a quantum computer. The quantum computer helps the AI with complex predictions it can’t handle alone.

The research team from University College London, who published their findings on Friday in the journal Science Advances, say that one day, quantum computers could help AI models make fast, accurate predictions across a range of industries, which would take regular computers weeks to figure out.

«The paper demonstrates that for these kinds of studies, even today’s relatively small and unreliable quantum devices can enhance the predictions of conventional AI models,» Peter Coveney, UCL professor and the study’s coauthor, told CNET.

Quantum computers differ from regular computers in several ways, including being able to perform simultaneous calculations rather than step-by-step calculations, and using quantum bits. While classical computers use bits as the smallest data unit, with each representing either a zero or a one, qubits can represent both zero and one simultaneously (superposition). Two qubits can also be linked together (entanglement).

Superposition and entanglement allow quantum computers to solve complex problems much faster than traditional computers. But quantum computers are incredibly delicate and must be kept at extremely low temperatures, making them impractical for everyday use.

But while today’s quantum computers are still experimental and often finicky, they might help AI solve big problems that would otherwise be too complicated or time-consuming.

Quantum advantage

The AI model used in the study is housed on a supercomputer connected to the quantum computer at the research center.

The team used this setup to predict how gases and liquids in a system would move and interact over an extended period. Climate science, medicine and city engineering all use this kind of modeling.

«Our new method appears to demonstrate ‘quantum advantage’ in a practical way — that is, the quantum computer outperforms what is possible through classical computing alone,» coauthor Maida Wang, a PHD student at UCL, said in an announcement.

Quantum computers are incredibly sensitive. Even tiny disturbances in the environment throw off the calculations, so the technology is still mostly used in research labs.

Because quantum computing is still limited, the researchers did most of the study with the supercomputer. The AI model handled the data processing, then used the quantum computer for one step.

After completing the hard calculations, the quantum computer handed the reins back to the AI model, so it could take care of everything else.

«Even today’s noisy and error-prone quantum devices can enhance the performance of conventional machine-learning algorithms trained on data from modern supercomputers,» Coveney said.

Solving big problems

Hooking up an AI model to run calculations on a quantum computer might sound outlandish, but there are already real examples of companies using this approach in healthcare.

In 2025, Google said its Quantum Echoes algorithm could calculate the structure of molecules that could pave the way for future drug discovery. Also, last year, the University of Toronto and Insilico Medicine used AI with a quantum computer to build molecules that target an «undruggable» form of cancer.

While there are still challenges with ensuring predictions are reliable, as well as with the sheer size of the datasets involved, Coveney said quantum computers can improve complex predictions.

«We are already at work on real-world applications,» he said.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for April 20, #1044

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for April 20, No. 1,044.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is pretty tricky. It was a little unnerving to see «cannibalism» as one of the clues. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Cough, cough!

Green group hint: Reel it in.

Blue group hint: Spin a web.

Purple group hint: Not Sunday or Tuesday.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Mass of smoke.

Green group: Fishing gear.

Blue group: Associated with black widow spiders.

Purple group: ____ Monday.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is mass of smoke. The four answers are billow, cloud, plume and puff.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is fishing gear. The four answers are bait, hook, net and rod.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is associated with black widow spiders. The four answers are cannibalism, hourglass, venom and web.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ Monday. The four answers are blue, cyber, manic and meatless.

Toughest Connections puzzles

We’ve made a note of some of the toughest Connections puzzles so far. Maybe they’ll help you see patterns in future puzzles.

#5: Included «things you can set,» such as mood, record, table and volleyball.

#4: Included «one in a dozen,» such as egg, juror, month and rose.

#3: Included «streets on screen,» such as Elm, Fear, Jump and Sesame.

#2: Included «power ___» such as nap, plant, Ranger and trip.

#1: Included «things that can run,» such as candidate, faucet, mascara and nose.

Technologies

You Can Easily Switch From an iPhone to an Android Phone. Here’s How

Transfer your texts, photos and more from Apple’s iOS to your new Android phone.

Making the big leap from an iPhone to an Android phone, you’ll find yourself with a pretty long checklist of things to do. Whether you’re transitioning to Google’s Pixel 7 or a new Samsung phone like the Galaxy Z Flip 4, switching operating systems can quickly become a hassle if you don’t know the most efficient way to move your data.

The secret to an easy-peasy transfer process lies with the tiny plastic adapter that Google and Samsung (sometimes) include in the box. It’s like hiring professional movers to move your stuff, unpack it and decorate your new house just like your old one! The adapter has a USB-A connector on one end and a USB-C connector on the other that allows you to connect your new phone to your old iPhone. You can also use a USB-C to Lightning cable for newer phones like the iPhone 11.

With the adapter, you can transfer your photos, videos, files, music and wallpaper. You can even use it to automatically download any Android versions of free iOS apps you had on your old Apple phone. While iMessage, Apple’s messaging service, won’t work on an Android phone, you can even move your message history and threads to your new phone.

Switch from iPhone to a Google Pixel phone

If you’re switching specifically from an iPhone to a Google Pixel, the first thing you want to do is to charge up both phones. Next, you’re going to turn off iMessage across all of your Apple devices — any device that uses your AppleID. Go to Settings, then Messages and then toggle off iMessage.

If your new Pixel came with a SIM card, install it, turn the phone on and tap the Start button. Next, connect to a Wi-Fi network and then select Copy your data. Now unlock your old iPhone, and put your lighting power cable into the bottom. Then, plug the other end into the «magic adapter» which Google calls a Quick Switch Adapter (QSA). Finally, plug in the QSA into the Pixel. You can also use a USB-C to Lighting cable.

When prompted, tap Trust on your iPhone. Then sign into your Google Account on the Pixel. Next, choose what exactly you want to copy (photos, music, messages, etc.), then tap Copy.

Now it’s time for your Pixel to actually transfer everything. Depending on how much stuff you’re moving, this can take anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours. While the transfer happens, you can continue setting up your phone like adding a PIN or setting up Google Assistant and Google Pay. Once the transfer completes, you’re done. Check to make sure everything you wanted to migrate actually did and enjoy your new Google life.

Switch from an iPhone to a Samsung Galaxy phone

If you got a new Samsung Galaxy phone, it also comes with an adapter, though you can move your data over Wi-Fi, too. I recommend using the adapter because it’s faster. You can also use a USB-C to Lighting cable to connect the two. Just like the Pixel transfer, the first thing you need to do is make sure both phones are charged up and turn off iMessage on your iPhone.

However, unlike the Pixel, you have the option to set up your Galaxy phone as new and then transfer the data which means you can start using your phone right away instead of waiting. To start the transfer, open the Smart Switch app on your Samsung phone. Your phone might take a minute to download the app.

Once you have it opened, you might be prompted to send or receive data. Tap Receive. Then, choose how you want to transfer: Wi-Fi or cable. Next, connect both phones with the adapter and your iPhone’s lightning cable — if you’re transferring over Wi-Fi, there’s no need to connect the phones together with a cable.

On the iPhone, tap Trust and on the Samsung phone you’ll see a message pop up that reads Connecting to your iPhone. If your iPhone uses encryption for backup, you might be prompted to enter your password. It should be your Apple ID password.

Next, the Samsung phone will scan your iPhone for data. This can take a few minutes after which you can choose exactly what kind of data you want to bring over. Then, tap the transfer arrow. The actual transfer can take a couple of minutes to an hour. Once it’s done, go through your new Samsung phone and check on your data. If you’re not finding your photos and videos in the Gallery app, check the Google Photos app.