Adobe Unveils Next-Gen AI Tools While Addressing Content Protection Concerns
At Max London 2025, Adobe launched powerful new AI tools and added features that help creators protect their work—driving innovation while keeping artists in control.
Firefly Gets a Major Upgrade with Image Model 4
Adobe’s flagship generative AI platform, Firefly, has received a substantial upgrade with the introduction of Image Model 4. This latest iteration delivers impressive improvements in photo realism, quality, and speed, allowing creators to generate stunningly lifelike images with unprecedented detail.
“The new models improve text generation in images and have features that let users use images of their choice to get the model to generate pictures in that style,” explained Alexandru Costin, VP of Generative AI at Adobe.
Image Model 4 can now generate images in resolutions up to 2K, while a more advanced version called Image Model 4 Ultra specializes in rendering complex scenes with intricate details and small structures. The results are striking—particularly in portrait photography, where the AI can now create remarkably realistic human faces with nuanced lighting and expressions.
Adobe highlighted that it trained Firefly solely on Adobe Stock images, ensuring it’s “commercially safe” for professional use—a key edge over some rival AI image generators.
Firefly Boards: A New Collaborative Moodboarding Tool
Perhaps the most exciting new addition to Adobe’s AI arsenal is Firefly Boards, now available in public beta. This innovative tool transforms the creative ideation process by allowing users to create AI-powered moodboards.
The concept is simple yet powerful: add some inspiration images, hit “generate,” and watch as AI suggests related visuals in a film strip. A remix feature enables merging images together, with the AI automatically suggesting appropriate prompts. The collaborative nature of Boards means team members can contribute ideas to the same canvas, streamlining the brainstorming process.
What makes Firefly Boards particularly noteworthy is its integration with non-Adobe AI models. Users can incorporate images generated by Google Imagen, OpenAI’s GPT image generation, and other third-party tools alongside Firefly-created content. This open approach significantly broadens the tool’s creative possibilities while maintaining Adobe’s commitment to proper attribution through Content Credentials.
Video Generation Goes Mainstream
After a limited beta release last year, Adobe’s Firefly video model is now available to everyone. The tool allows users to generate video clips from text prompts or images, with controls for camera angles, start and end frames, atmospheric elements, and motion design customization.
The model can generate video clips at resolutions up to 1080p, making it suitable for professional applications. This expansion into video generation represents Adobe’s commitment to bringing AI capabilities to all creative mediums.
Mobile Access Coming Soon
In a move that will delight on-the-go creators, Adobe announced that Firefly will be coming to iOS and Android “in the next few months.” This mobile expansion will make Adobe’s powerful AI tools accessible from virtually anywhere, further democratizing access to advanced creative capabilities.
Content Authenticity: Protecting Creators in the AI Era
Alongside its AI news, Adobe launched the free Content Authenticity app to help creators protect their work in an AI-heavy world.
The app enables digital artists and photographers to embed invisible metadata directly into their images’ pixels. This data survives even when screenshots are taken, ensuring attribution remains intact. Creators can link their social media profiles, websites, and even verify their identity through LinkedIn integration.
Most significantly, the Content Authenticity app includes a checkbox option that states: “I request that generative AI models not use my content.” While this opt-out mechanism relies on AI companies respecting these requests when training models, it represents an important step toward giving creators more control over how their work is used.
Photoshop and Lightroom Get AI Enhancements
Adobe’s flagship editing applications weren’t left out of the AI revolution. Photoshop received several Firefly-powered enhancements, including “Composition Reference” in text-to-image generation, which allows users to use reference images when creating new assets.
Photoshop’s new beta Actions panel lets users edit with simple commands like “brighten the image,” making it way easier for beginners to dive in.
Lightroom users will benefit from the new “Select Landscape” mask feature, which automatically identifies different elements in landscape photos for targeted editing. This builds upon the existing “Select Sky” tool but offers more granular control over scene elements.
Mobile Lightroom also received an upgrade to its “generative remove” feature, making it easier to eliminate distractions from images—similar to capabilities found in the latest smartphones from Apple and Samsung.
Premiere Pro Streamlines Video Workflows
Premiere Pro gets a boost with smarter search—editors can now find clips by describing elements (like “brown hat”).
Plus, “Generative Extend” now supports 4K, letting users stretch scenes in any direction—perfect for extra b-roll.
Caption generation has also been improved, with automatic translation into 25 languages. Even more impressively, Premiere Pro can now automatically translate voiceovers, making content more accessible to international audiences.
Balancing Innovation with Responsibility
Throughout the Adobe Max London presentations, the company addressed concerns about AI’s impact on creative industries. David Wadhwani, President of Adobe’s Digital Media Business, drew parallels between early worries about digital editing “killing creativity” and current anxieties about AI tools.
Adobe repeatedly emphasized that “your content will not be used to train generative AI”—a commitment that extends to images and videos generated by both Adobe’s models and third-party ones used in Firefly Boards.
Looking Ahead
Adobe’s Max London 2025 announcements show it’s diving headfirst into AI—without forgetting its creative roots. By pairing powerful generative tools with content protection, it’s aiming to please both tech lovers and purists.
As these features hit Adobe’s suite soon, expect a shake-up in creative workflows across everything from photography to film.
