Adobe chief strategy officer Scott Belsky. Photo-illustration by Clark Miller, using Adobe Firefly.Can Adobe Catch the AI Bug?
With its $20 billion Figma acquisition imperiled, the software giant, guided by product czar Scott Belsky, is turning its attention to Firefly—its copyright-safe generative AI model.
Six months ago, Adobe’s chief strategy officer, Scott Belsky, was in a New York conference room with around two dozen top marketing executives. They had gathered to discuss how artificial intelligence could transform advertising, allowing them to turn a string of words into a visual ad. At first, Belsky thought they were on the same page about the vast potential of generative AI. “Their answer was, ‘It’s really exciting,’” he remembered. But then came a strange qualification: “‘We would never use it.’”
Belsky was baffled. “How could you not find so much use in a technology that will automatically take an asset and make it appropriate for every market, every language, every localization?” he asked. But the marketers insisted they weren’t comfortable using any AI imaging model trained on copyrighted content that could leave clients open to lawsuits.