Adobe Announces Major AI-Powered Updates To Apps Along With Price Increases

Adobe recently announced that its Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, Firefly, is now out of beta and available across its Creative Cloud, Express, and Experience Cloud platforms. Features like Generative Fill in Photoshop, Generative Recolor in Illustrator, and Text to Image in Express are all powered by Adobe’s Firefly technology. Creative Cloud now also includes two new applications powered by AI, Firefly and Express Premium.

These new AI-powered features aren’t coming cheap, however. Adobe announced a price increase for users in North America, Central America, South America, and Europe. Starting in November, the price of Creative Cloud Single App plans will increase by $2-3 a month. Individual All App plans will go up by $5-7.50 a month, and Creative Cloud for Teams will cost $2 more monthly for single apps and $5 per month for all apps. These increases will not apply to Creative Cloud plans for students, teachers, and educational institutions. Adobe Acrobat, Stock, Substance, Creative Cloud Photography, and Express plans remain unchanged.

In addition to price hikes for existing plans, Adobe is introducing a separate fee model specifically for Generative Images. Adobe’s Generative Image pricing has a fast and a slow lane—Creative Cloud subscribers have 1,000 “fast” Generative Images credits included in their plan, after which they have to use the slow image generation or shell out for yet another Adobe subscription for a bundle of credits, which starts at 100 credits for $4.99 a month. And, of course, those credits don’t roll over to the next month.

While Adobe appears to want to turn your monthly subscription into a mobile game app monetization and 90s cell phone plan hybrid from hell, there’s more mixed AI news from the company.

Contributors to Adobe Stock whose assets trained Firefly were paid a one-time bonus by the software firm. The amount paid varies based on the number of contributions and licenses generated, and future payout will be based on new and approved images used after this initial bonus. Furthermore, now that Firefly is out of beta and can be used commercially, Adobe is allowing the contribution of AI-generated assets to Stock. Plus, contributors can not opt out of having their work used to train Adobe’s artificial intelligence.

If you’re a contributor to Adobe Stock and concerned about the day you’re competing against machines you trained will come, you needn’t worry further because it’s now. Adobe Firefly is generating commercial work competing against your own on its platform. Adobe says it will mark work generated using AI in Stock, but that will do little to salve artists' feelings over their assets being used to train bots without their consent or compete with contributors using AI to mimic their work.