Technologies

I Just Tried Photoshop’s New AI Tool. It Makes Photos Creative, Funny or Unreal

Adobe’s Firefly generative AI tool offers a new way to fiddle with photos. Expect a lot of fun and fakery.

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 overall but far from perfect. 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 skills can be powerful. In Adobe’s live demo, the were 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 were positioned too high in the frame or in other unconvincing ways.

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.

«This is the future of Photoshop,» Yap said.

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.»

Technologies

A Humanoid Robot Visits the White House to Push AI for Teaching Kids

First lady Melania Trump shares the spotlight with a Figure 03 robot to promote the use of artificial intelligence in education.

An unexpected guest escorted Melania Trump at the Fostering the Future Together Global Coalition Summit on Wednesday: a walking, talking Figure 03 humanoid robot.

During the event, the first lady pitched a future where AI-powered humanoid robots — presented as an idealized educator named «Plato» — provide students with personalized and instant access to human knowledge, including philosophy and art.

The Figure 03 robot is made by Silicon Valley-based robotics company Figure AI, which introduced its third-generation humanoid robot in October last year. The Figure 03 robot costs around $25,000, according to Forbes.

Figure 03 was designed for people to use in their homes, with demo videos showing it folding laundry, lifting eggs from a carton, using a washing machine and delivering drinks to its owners lounging by the pool. It was also shown in corporate use cases as a receptionist and a package deliverer. Using a proprietary AI engine called Helix, it can autonomously perform these tasks and respond to your voice commands.

At the White House, the humanoid robot walked slowly down the red carpet to deliver opening remarks for the tech summit.

«I’m grateful to be part of this historic movement to empower children with technology and education,» the Figure 03 robot said. It then said «welcome» in various languages.

The first lady later said that AI-powered humanoid robots could be placed in children’s homes as an aid to their education to «boost analytic skills and problem solving and adapt in real time to a student’s pace, prior knowledge and even emotional state.»

Promoting AI in education

The two-day summit is hosting leaders from 45 nations and 28 technology organizations, and is intended to «empower children through education and technology,» according to a White House statement. Guests included representatives from tech giants such as Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft and the AI data analytics company Palantir.

The summit is part of the first lady’s Be Best: Fostering the Future initiative, which aims to help children learn using advanced technology. It was introduced in 2018 as an awareness campaign aimed at combating cyberbullying and helping children affected by the opioid crisis.

US Education Secretary Linda McMahon spoke about AI being one of the Department of Education’s main priorities on the first day of the summit.

«If we’re able to scale these resources effectively by investing in AI infrastructure and training, we can offer expert instructions across countless fields, to hire volumes of people at a fraction of the cost,» McMahon said Tuesday at a roundtable meeting.

According to McMahon, the Department of Education has already dedicated millions of dollars in grants to support the use of AI in schools.

The event follows criticism of the Trump administration’s 2025 executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. While the Department of Education hasn’t been officially abolished, it has undergone significant policy changes, funding cuts and workforce reductions.

The introduction of a humanoid robot at the summit sparked significant backlash among many who are wary of the technology’s role in the classroom. Critics took to social media to voice concerns that these machines could eventually replace teachers, stripping the education system of essential human connection, and leading to increased layoffs and cost-cutting.

On one Huffington Post Instagram post featuring the robot, commenters expressed deep skepticism, with one user sarcastically noting, «Nice, getting rid of educators in favor of a robot,» while another flatly rejected the concept, stating, «No, I don’t want to imagine a world with emotionless robots educating our children.»

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Technologies

Nintendo’s $20 Switch 2 Upgrade for Super Mario Wonder Is Worth It for the Extras

Commentary: Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s Bellabel Park DLC is here this week, but it’s more about lots of chaotic multiplayer minigames than new courses.

I want a new Super Mario Bros. Switch 2 game as much as anyone, but almost a year into the console’s first year, it hasn’t happened yet. Mario Kart? Mario Tennis? Mario Party? Yes. New Yoshi game? That’s happening soon, too. And now, we have the next closest thing: The wonderful 2023 Super Mario Bros. Wonder has a Switch 2 downloadable-content pack for $20 that’s, well, sort of a new Mario game, just a week before the Super Mario Galaxy movie arrives in theaters.

I’ve been playing it for the past week, and it’s worth the upgrade if you like multiplayer Mario. If not, well, you might consider it anyway.

The awkwardly named «Super Mario Bros. Wonder — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park» is an add-on to Wonder, but it’s really just focused on building out a whole bunch of multiplayer party modes. The new course variants and minigame challenges, while welcome, require online multiplayer or local multiplayer play to work. For most of this new Switch 2 update, you can’t play offline on your own.

The multiplayer games cover dozens of challenges and themes — some turning everyone into bouncy balls, others making everyone rush to collect the most coins. You can throw up to four players locally on the Switch 2 at home or up to 12 players online at once, and it gets busy fast. I can see screaming breaking out with kids.

I played an hour or so of multiplayer sessions, and it was fun. But I haven’t gotten to play with lots of others online yet other than that. Still, it does feel sort of like Mario Party Super Mario Style, as opposed to Super Mario Bros. game extensions.

The DLC does have some extras you can still enjoy on your own. Seven new miniboss stages have been added into the game, featuring all of the Koopalings to take on. They’re the extended universe of Mario enemies, and each of the levels has the miniboss use a strange new power to melt the world in clever ways.

A new Toad Brigade Training Camp mode also offers up dozens of little challenge stages to beat, all remixes of existing Wonder levels. Some involve surviving without touching enemies or coins; some you have to defeat all enemies or collect all coins before time runs out. They’re addictive and hard, and I’m glad for them existing.

Nintendo also tried to add some fun extras: Bellabel park has lots of flowers you can collect by watering plants with «Bellabel water» you collect by completing tasks. And you can decorate parts of the park. It’s sort of neither here nor there for me, though, because I come to Mario platformer games to play fun levels, not decorate gardens. Pokemon Pokopia is the place for that.

Rosalina and a Luma Star are extra characters you can play with, but Rosalina doesn’t do anything truly new and the Luma Star is a co-op option. There’s also a weird Flower power-up now that turns you into a walking flowerpot, throwing flowers upward to attack enemies or hit blocks. It was OK. It’s not my favorite new extra.

Maybe that’s what feels missing here: Wonder threw all sorts of wildcards out into the game, from new enemies to strange Wonder Seeds that transformed levels. Bellabel Park feels more like a multiplayer-focused remix than a bunch of new single-player whimsy.

I like the multiplayer games on tap more than I liked the Switch 2 add-on for Mario Party Jamboree. They’re probably worth it if you’re a Switch 2 owner with a big family or lots of friends who want to play.

And even though I appreciate the resolution boost to the graphics, the Switch 2 graphics upgrade is hard to spot since the game’s «older» graphics have a retro look that still looked great before the upgrade (to me, at least).

What I really want, of course, is a truly new Mario game. Who doesn’t? That’s not on the table yet. But maybe, just maybe, Wonder’s Switch 2 pack is a little appetizer before that news eventually comes. But as revamped Switch 2 game editions go, Wonder’s extras are the best yet and turn this game into a truly multiplayer-rich bunch of fun.

Technologies

Verum Finance — the future of digital payments

Virtual Verum Finance cards can be linked to Apple Pay and Google Pay, giving users seamless access to in-store payments, online shopping, hotel bookings, flight purchases, and more worldwide.

The cards work globally, enabling payments without geographic limitations while providing a high level of security and full control directly within the app.

Issuing a card takes just a few minutes and does not require switching to third-party services — the entire process is handled within Verum Messenger.

Users get a unified solution for communication and finance: from messaging to managing payments and digital assets in one application.

Download Verum Messenger, get your Verum Finance card, and start using it today.