Technologies

Adobe: Our New Generative AI Will Help Creative Pros, Not Hurt Them

The Firefly tools begin with image creation and font styling but soon will spread to Photoshop and other software.

In 2022, OpenAI’s Dall-E service wowed the world with the ability to turn text prompts into images. Now Adobe has built its own version of this generative AI technology with tools that begin a technological overhaul of the company’s widely used creative tools.

On Tuesday, Adobe released the first two members of its new Firefly collection of generative AI tools for beta testing. The first tool creates an image based on a text prompt like «fierce alligator leaping out of the water during a lightning storm,» with hundreds of styles that can tweak results. The other applies prompt-based styles to text, letting people create letters that look hairy, scaly, mossy or however else they want.

Firefly for now is available on Adobe’s website, but the company will build generative AI directly into other tools, starting with its Photoshop image editing software, Illustrator for designs and Adobe Express for creating quick videos. The company hasn’t revealed its pricing approach for the new tools.

Creative professionals might see Firefly as an incursion into their creative domain, going beyond mechanical tools like selecting colors and trimming videos into the heart and soul of their jobs. With AI showing new smarts when it comes to translating documents, interpreting tax code, composing music and creating travel itineraries, it’s not irrational for professionals to feel spooked.

Like other AI fans, though, Adobe sees artificial intelligence as the latest digital tool to amplify what humans can do. For example, Firefly eventually could let people use Adobe tools to tailor designs to individuals instead of just creating one design for a broad audience, said Alexandru Costin, vice president of Adobe’s generative AI work.

«We don’t think AI will replace creative creators. We think that creators using AI will be more competitive than creators not using AI. This is why we want to bring AI to the fingertips of all our user base,» Costin said. «The only way to succeed in AI is to embrace it.»

Adobe’s Firefly products are trained from the company’s own library of stock images, along with public domain and licensed works. The company has worked to reduce the bias in training data that AI models can reflect, for example that business executives are male.

AI is a «sea change»

Artificial intelligence uses processes inspired by human brains for computing tasks, trained to recognize patterns in complex real-world data instead of following traditional and rigid if-this-then-that programming. With advances in AI hardware, software, algorithms and training data, the field is advancing rapidly and touching just about every corner of tech.

The latest flavor of the technology, generative AI, can create new material on its own. The best known example, ChatGPT, can write software, hold conversations and compose poetry. Microsoft is employing ChatGPT’s technology foundation, GPT-4, to boost Bing search results, offer email writing tips and help build presentations

AI tools are sprouting up all over. Adobe has used AI for years under its Sensei brand for features like recognizing human subjects in Lightroom photos and transcribing speech into text in Premiere Pro videos. EbSynth applies a photo’s style to a video, HueMint creates color palettes and LeiaPix converts 2D photos into 3D scenes.

But it’s the new generative AI that brings new creative possibilities to digital art and design.

«It’s a sea change,» said Forrester analyst David Truog.

An illustration Adobe's use of generative AI to style the letter N so it looks mossy, golden, or made or thousands of red particles. — One of the first members of Adobe’s Firefly family of generative AI tools will style text based on prompts like «the letter N made of gold with intricate ornaments.»

Adobe

Alpaca offers a Photoshop plug-in to generate art, and Aug X Labs can turn a text prompt into a video. Google’s MusicLM converts text to music, though it’s not open to the public. Dall-E captured the internet’s attention with its often fantastical imagery — the name marries Pixar’s WALL-E robot with the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.

Related tools like Midjourney and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion spread the technology even further.

If Adobe didn’t offer generative AI abilities, creative pros and artists would get them from somewhere else.

Indeed, Microsoft on Tuesday incorporated Dall-E technology with its Bing Image Creator service.

Training AIs isn’t easy, but it’s getting less difficult, at least for those who have a healthy budget. Chip designer Nvidia on Tuesday announced that Adobe is using its new H100 Hopper GPU to train Firefly models through a new service called Picasso. Other Picasso customers include photo licensing companies Getty Images and Shutterstock.

Legal engineering

Developing good AI isn’t just a technical matter. Adobe set up Firefly to sidestep legal and social problems that AI poses.

For example, three artists sued Stability AI and Midjourney in January over the use of their works in AI training data. They «seek to end this blatant and enormous infringement of their rights before their professions are eliminated by a computer program powered entirely by their hard work,» their lawsuit said.

Getty Images also sued Stability AI, alleging that it «unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright.» It offers licenses to its enormous catalog of photos and other images for AI training, but Stability AI didn’t license the images. Stability AI, DeviantArt and Midjourney didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Adobe wants to assure artists that they needn’t worry about such problems. There are no copyright problems, no brand logos, and no Mickey Mouse characters. «You don’t want to infringe somebody else’s copyright by mistake,» Costin said.

The approach is smart, Truog said.

«What Adobe is doing with Firefly is strategically very similar to what Apple did by introducing the iTunes Music Store 20 years ago,» he said. Back then, Napster music sharing showed demand for online music, but the recording industry lawsuits crushed the idea. «Apple jumped in and designed a service that let people access music online but legally, more easily, and in a way that compensated the content creators instead of just stealing from them.»

Adobe also worked to counteract another problem that could make businesses leery, showing biased or stereotypical imagery.

It’s now up to Adobe to convince creative pros that it’s time to catch the AI wave.

«The introduction of digital creativity has increased the number of creative jobs, not decreased them, even if at the time it looked like a big threat,» Costin said. «We think the same thing will happen with generative AI.»

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

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 5, #970

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 5 #970.

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 kind of tough. 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: Star-spangled signs.

Green group hint: Smash into.

Blue group hint: Not green or red.

Purple group hint: Same surname.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Cultural symbols of the US.

Green group: Collide with.

Blue group: Blue things.

Purple group: Lees of Hollywood.

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 cultural symbols of the US. The four answers are American flag, apple pie, bald eagle and baseball.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is collide with. The four answers are bump, butt, knock and ram.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is blue things. The four answers are jeans, lapis lazuli, ocean and sky.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Lees of Hollywood. The four answers are Ang, Bruce, Christopher and Spike.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 5 #704

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 5, No. 704.

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

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one, once you clue in on the theme. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Quint-essential.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Not four, or six.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

DAYS, GIVE, WOVE, DOVE, LOVE, DOGS, SCONE, STOLE, GEEK, LODE, SIEGE, SLEW, HENS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

TOES, OCEANS, SENSES, VOWELS, BOROUGHS, WEEKDAYS

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is GIVEMEFIVE. To find it, start with the G that’s three letters to the right on the top row, and wind down.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Technologies

The Motorola Signature Is the Moto Phone I’ve Wanted for Years

Motorola’s new phone is its best flagship yet and could be the Galaxy S26 Plus rival that Samsung didn’t see coming.

At CES 2026, among the AI humanoids, flashy concepts and next-gen foldables, was a Motorola phone that I didn’t expect to be a CES highlight. And no, I’m not talking about theMotorola Razr Fold. While it was the talk of the town (after all, it is the company’s first-ever book-style foldable), there’s a premium smartphone with top specs and a sophisticated design: the Motorola Signature.

Recent high-end Motorola phones have had good-looking hardware, but they don’t compete with the Galaxy S25 Ultras or Pixel 10s of the world. They fall short in one or more areas, including display, performance, cameras, software or battery. The Motorola Signature is the company’s first flagship phone that looks confident enough to take on heavyweights like the upcoming Galaxy S26 Plus and the current iPhone 17, without faltering on either hardware or software.

I’ve been using it for a couple of days now, and this Motorola phone doesn’t have any major downsides, especially for the price. The biggest one could be availability: It won’t be coming to the US, but it is now available for purchase in India at an unbeatable price. It undercuts the OnePlus 15, iPhone 17 and the Pixel 10 by almost $150 or more (directly converted from INR).

With the ever-increasing prices of premium phones, the Motorola Signature is the flagship killer we’ve been waiting for. At about $660 (INR 59,999), it is hard to beat, and I can admit I’m finally excited about a Motorola phone that’s not a Razr.

Motorola Signature is lightweight, slim and rugged

The Motorola Signature has a 6.8-inch 1,264×2,780-pixel resolution AMOLED display with support for a 165Hz refresh rate. It is an LTPO panel, so it can be set to 1Hz for an always-on display (like the iPhone 17 series and Galaxy S25 Ultra), thereby saving battery life. Its resolution might not be as high as the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s, but it is a promising screen for gaming and content consumption.

I couldn’t find a game to test its 165Hz refresh rate, but watching YouTube videos, Instagram Reels and reading ebooks — both indoors and outdoors — was a pleasing experience. The screen remains legible in all lighting conditions.

Motorola’s new phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset and is paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. While it’s not the highest-end chip available (that’d be the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5), it packs plenty of power. I had no issues in day-to-day use, occasional multitasking or gaming. My only complaint was with the camera shutter in low light, but we’ll get to it in a bit.

The Motorola Signature ships with Android 16 with the company’s in-house Hello UI on top. It is a comparatively clean interface with plenty of customization options to fine-tune your experience. One of my favorite features, Moto gestures (twist to open the camera or make a double-chop motion to turn on and off the flashlight) is always handy in unexpected ways.

You get an AI Key on the left side of the phone to trigger Moto AI (uses Perplexity or Microsoft Copilot), but it can only be triggered once you create a Motorola account. You can configure the button to do other shortcuts, like double-press it to take notes and press and hold to trigger Moto AI. But in reality, I didn’t use any of these features in my daily life and would’ve preferred the ability to remap them to a shortcut. Google’s Gemini assistant is also available.

The Signature has a 5,200-mAh silicon-carbon battery and supports 90-watt wired charging and 50-watt wireless charging. Should those speeds hold up, that battery might fill up quickly using either method. It lasted me an entire day on medium use, but on another day, I had to charge it twice when I pushed it with streaming, browsing, Google Maps navigation for 30 minutes and active camera usage. It doesn’t compete with OnePlus 15’s massive 7,300-mAh cell but does well to reduce battery anxiety.

All of this sounds more impressive when you take the Signature’s design into context: The flagship Qualcomm processor’s power, 5,000-mAh plus battery, big AMOLED screen and three 50-megapixel cameras housed in a slim and lightweight design. The new Motorola phone is 6.99mm thick and weighs just 186 grams. For context, the Galaxy S25 Plus, with a smaller battery, measures 7.3mm thick and weighs 190 grams, while most recent big phones weigh 200 grams or more.

I shifted from the iPhone 17 Pro Max and enjoyed using the Motorola Signature because it weighed less. But I didn’t expect it to be so light. The Signature feels good in my hand. I’m glad it doesn’t have sharp flat sides like the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Plus, I love its linen-inspired finish on the back, which sets it apart from the competition. Like its Edge siblings, the Signature is rated IP68 and IP69 for dust and water resistance (meaning it can survive being submerged under a meter of water for 30 minutes and high-pressure water jets), so there’s no fear of dust and water damage.

Improving on the 2 weakest links

Most Motorola phones that I’ve used in recent years, including the $1,300 Razr Ultra have one or two downsides: software support and/or cameras.

The Signature marks a new beginning for the brand as it joins the ranks of Samsung and Google with seven years of Android OS software and security updates. This is on par with Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones and better than what OnePlus offers. I hope this new software update policy is implemented on more Motorola phones launching in 2026.

Secondly, the Motorola Signature (finally!) introduces an impressive camera system. On the back, you get three cameras: a 50-megapixel main camera with OIS, paired with a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3x zoom lens and OIS, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. This is the first Motorola phone with cameras that I wouldn’t trade for another setup during my vacations.

Photos from the primary and telephoto cameras have better color accuracy than previous Moto shooters. Images have a slightly warmer tone and are saturated — not as much as the OnePlus 15, which delivers much more saturated tones. I prefer Signature’s look in most scenarios.

However, the ultrawide-angle camera retains fewer details, and OnePlus does better in that regard.

The telephoto lens struggles with edge detection in low-light portraits, but I loved using it for architecture shots and capturing scenery around me. It can deliver some stunning shots even in 6x. Mind you, it has 3x optical zoom, but I shot the above photo in 6x, and it has a nice bokeh, good details and an overall pleasing look.

Motorola Signature final thoughts

Overall, the Signature has solid cameras for the price and the best optics yet for a Motorola phone. But there’s one hindrance: The camera shutter in low light is slow to process images. For instance, I wanted to snap a few action shots during a badminton game, but I missed some great smashes because the camera wouldn’t allow me to capture images faster.

The Motorola Signature marks a solid flagship comeback for the brand. It has a big and bright display, a capable processor, a versatile camera setup and good battery life. This phone is hard to fault in its price segment.

The Signature is now available to purchase in India at a starting price of INR 59,999 (approximately $660) for the 256GB variant. It will go on sale in Europe for €999 (approximately $1,170) with 512GB storage in the base version. Motorola has plans to launch its new flagship phone in more countries across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions. However, the Motorola Signature won’t be coming to the US.