Adobe used the opening keynote of its MAX conference at the Miami Beach Convention Center on Tuesday to introduce AI assistants inside Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and Illustrator, a rebuilt Firefly "AI creative studio," and support for outside AI agents to operate its desktop tools. Executives repeatedly told creators they can choose not to use AI at all.
Shantanu Narayen, Adobe's CEO, opened the keynote by telling the crowd it was "so wonderful to be here with this inspiring global creative community in Miami Beach, as well as those who are tuning in across the world."
The conference runs through Thursday, Nov. 12, with the keynote livestreamed online.
A handoff on stage
The keynote doubled as a leadership transition. Narayen, who said he is moving on after 29 years at Adobe, introduced Anil Chakravarthy to the audience. Adobe announced in September that Chakravarthy will become CEO on Dec. 1, with Narayen becoming executive chair.
Chakravarthy said he has been on a listening tour with creators in San Francisco, New York and Miami and has heard "angst" about AI and the economy alongside excitement. "Adobe will meet you where you are," he said, promising continued work on tools for people who want nothing to do with AI, "and the option to not use AI."
What Adobe announced
An AI assistant in the apps. Adobe said its new Creative Agent is built into Firefly and into its professional apps. In demonstrations, the Premiere assistant marked every question asked in a transcribed interview and moved the questions to their own track. The After Effects assistant built a sequence of animated text scenes with adjustable controls. In Illustrator, the assistant applied a gradient to about 50 separate strokes while the presenter worked on something else.
Outside AI agents can run Adobe's tools. Chakravarthy said Adobe is adding native support for the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for connecting AI agents to software, to all of its desktop creative tools. Demonstrations showed an assistant from OpenAI resizing a poster for several platforms and translating it in Photoshop, and an assistant from Anthropic preparing a design for screen printing in Illustrator. Adobe said its tools are also available inside conversational AI from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Slack, with Microsoft Copilot coming. He called the integrations "coming soon."
Premiere and After Effects. Premiere gets a rebuilt color grading mode for video editors, a generative media tool that works inside the editing timeline to extend clips or add B-roll, music and sound effects, and a mask-based generative tool for removing objects from shots. Audio updates include a second version of Enhance Speech, a feature that separates overlapping voices onto different tracks, and stem separation for dialogue, music and background sound.
Photoshop. New features include generative restyle, which turns an AI generation into an adjustable layer; rotate object; a relight layer for adding and editing light sources; and an enhanced edge tool. Adobe said it shipped 77 new features across 32 Photoshop releases this year, that this release is its most stable yet with 40% fewer crashes and abnormal exits, and that 70% of professional Photoshop users regularly use its AI-based features. Adobe also showed a prototype built with Google DeepMind that generates many image options in near real time.
Illustrator. Updates include a multi-image placement tool, on-canvas controls for the blend tool, a font search built into the toolbar with instant access to more than 35,000 Adobe Fonts, "dynamic text" that reflows type as a frame is resized, and a "concept to vector" tool that turns a sketch into editable vector artwork.
A rebuilt Firefly. Adobe described Firefly as a single place to ideate, create and scale work, pairing its own tools with models from partners, including Google's Gemini, Kling, Runway, Luma, Flux, OpenAI's GPT Image and ElevenLabs. Three products were shown. Firefly Design, a canvas that combines vector, image, 3D and motion work and checks designs against a brand library, was described as available now. Firefly Graph, a node-based tool for building and sharing reusable workflows Adobe calls "capsules," is in public beta. Firefly Builder, which turns a design into working website code, is in private beta.
Topaz and enterprise. Adobe highlighted Topaz Labs' image and video upscaling and restoration models. Adobe completed its acquisition of the company on Sept. 23. For large companies, Adobe announced new features in GenStudio, its marketing and creative platform, and featured designers from Walt Disney Imagineering and the Coca-Cola Co.
What Adobe says about the stakes
Adobe said it recently passed one billion monthly active users across its products. The keynote returned again and again to the argument that "taste" and creative judgment will set creators apart in a flood of AI-generated content, and that creators should decide when, whether and which AI models to use.
Adobe described most of what was shown in Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and Illustrator as available through Creative Cloud updates. Adobe labeled the outside-agent integrations as coming soon and Firefly Builder as in private beta.