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 May 24, #713

Hints and answers for Connections for May 24, #713.

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 Connections puzzle has a fun variety of categories. The purple one appeals to my English major heart. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now 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 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: Goo-goo.

Green group hint: Not shirts.

Blue group hint: City that never sleeps.

Purple group hint: Acclaimed writers.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Baby gear.

Green group: Kinds of pants minus «s.»

Blue group: New York sports team members.

Purple group: Black women authors.

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 baby gear. The four answers are bib, bottle, monitor and stroller.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is kinds of pants minus «s.» The four answers are capri, jean, jogger and slack.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is New York sports team members. The four answers are Jet, Met, Net and Ranger.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is black women authors. The four answers are Butler, Gay, Hooks and Walker.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Tuesday, May 20

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 20.

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

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword is a fun one, and now I’m singing the song from 1-Across in my head. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

The Mini Crossword is just one of many games in the Times’ games collection. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get at those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: «Pink ___ Club» (Chappell Roan hit)
Answer: PONY

5A clue: Instrument that might be made with a comb and wax paper
Answer: KAZOO

6A clue: How bedtime stories are often read
Answer: ALOUD

7A clue: On edge
Answer: TENSE

8A clue: Short Instagram video
Answer: REEL

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Less colorful
Answer: PALER

2D clue: Layer of the upper atmosphere
Answer: OZONE

3D clue: Totally pointless
Answer: NOUSE

4D clue: Hit a high note in a high place, perhaps
Answer: YODEL

5D clue: Kit ___ bar
Answer: KAT

How to play more Mini Crosswords

The New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day’s Mini Crossword for free, but you’ll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.

Technologies

Want to Speak to Dolphins? Researchers Won $100,000 AI Prize Studying Their Whistling

The scientists studied a bottlenose dolphin community in Sarasota, Florida, uncovering evidence of language-like communications.

If any dolphins are reading this: hello!

A team of scientists studying a community of Florida dolphins has been awarded the first $100,000 Coller Dolittle Challenge prize, set up to award research in interspecies communication algorithms.

The US-based team, led by Laela Sayigh of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found that a type of whistle that dolphins employ is used as an alarm. Another whistle they studied is used by dolphins to respond to unexpected or unfamiliar situations. The team used non-invasive hydrophones to perform the research, which provides evidence that dolphins may be using whistles like words, shared with multiple members of their communities.

Capturing the sounds is just the beginning. Researchers will use AI to continue deciphering the whistles to try to find more patterns.

«The main thing stopping us cracking the code of animal communication is a lack of data. Think of the 1 trillion words needed to train a large language model like ChatGPT. We don’t have anything like this for other animals,» said Jonathan Birch, a professor at the London School of Economics and Politics and one of the judges for the prize.

«That’s why we need programs like the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program, which has built up an extraordinary library of dolphin whistles over 40 years. The cumulative result of all that work is that Laela Sayigh and her team can now use deep learning to analyse the whistles and perhaps, one day, crack the code,» he said.

The award was part of a ceremony honoring the work of four teams from across the world. In addition to the dolphin project, researchers studied ways in which nightingales, marmoset monkeys and cuttlefish communicate.

The challenge is a collaboration between the Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University. Submissions for next year open up in August.

Dolphins are just the beginning

Researching animals and trying to learn the secrets of their communication is nothing new; but AI is speeding up the creation of larger and lager datasets.

«Breakthroughs are inevitable,» says Kate Zacarian, CEO and co-founder of Earth Species Project, a California-based nonprofit that also works in breaking down language barriers with the animal world.

«Just as AI has revolutionized the fields of medicine and material science, we see a similar opportunity to bring those advances to the study of animal communication and empower researchers in this space with entirely new capabilities,» Zacarian said.

Zacarian applauded Sayigh’s team and their win and said it will help bring broader recognition to the study of non-human animal communication. It could also bring more attention to ways that AI can change the nature of this type of research.
«The AI systems aren’t just faster — they allow for entirely new types of inquiry,» she said. «We’re moving from decoding isolated signals to exploring communication as a rich, dynamic, and structure phenomenon — whish is a task that’s simply too big for our human brains, but possible for large-scale AI models.»

Earth Species recently released an open-source large audio language model for analyzing animal sounds called NatureLM-audio. The organization is currently working with biologists and ethologists to study species including carrion crows, orcas, jumping spiders and others and plans to release some of their findings later this year, Zacarian said.