Adobe's significant week of AI: Firefly, Disney, Semrush, LinkedIn

      Adobe has spent the past two years integrating AI into its software. This week, it aimed to position itself as the foundational AI layer for the creative and marketing sectors, making five announcements over three days.

      The highlight is the introduction of an agent within the applications. Throughout the week, Adobe showcased its vision: a unified creative and marketing AI system that spans a solo creator’s Photoshop project to Disney theme parks, a retailer's advertising network, and a marketer's LinkedIn profile.

      1. The agent is now integrated into Photoshop and Premiere

      Starting Thursday, the Firefly AI Assistant is in public beta in Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, and Frame.io, with a private beta in After Effects. Each application features a chatbot-style sidebar that users can communicate with in simple language, and each assistant functions as a specialist for that particular program.

      Initially revealed in April, the agent previously could execute prompts using Adobe’s apps, but there was no interactive communication from within Photoshop or Premiere. Now that has changed.

      The central theme is about delegation rather than magic. In Premiere, it organizes footage into bins, renames clips in batches, flags interview questions, and places markers. In Photoshop, users can specify an outcome, change backgrounds, resize for different platforms, organize layers, and the assistant executes tasks across the design. In Illustrator, it can generate 50 versioned files from a spreadsheet or perform a pre-flight check for missing fonts.

      As Engadget highlighted during a demo, it does not take control of the cursor nor guide users through tasks; it is not a general-use computer assistant.

      Adobe also provided a preview of an updated Firefly creative AI studio (currently in private beta with a waitlist) that targets one of generative AI's most challenging issues: consistency. A feature named Elements allows users to save a character, location, or object for future use; another companion feature, Projects, organizes assets and context together. New preset "skills" are designed to enhance Firefly’s capabilities to be more competitive with platforms like Figma and Canva, enabling users to create a brand kit, convert product images into short videos, compile a Quick Cut, or generate videos from storyboards.

      2. Disney Imagineering receives tailored Firefly models

      In the same week, Adobe announced a partnership with Walt Disney Imagineering's R&D division, employing Adobe Firefly Foundry to develop custom generative models that draw from Imagineering’s own design library rather than the open internet.

      This difference underpins the entire proposition. Adobe states, "Models trained on data scraped from the internet provide no assurances regarding intellectual property fidelity, brand consistency, or the origin of produced assets," while a Foundry model relies on licensed and proprietary resources.

      For Disney, the tools include sketch-to-image concept art, a model that produces franchise-accurate assets for Mickey, Frozen, Moana, Lilo & Stitch, and Cars, as well as a 3D modeling capability that transforms 2D concepts into prototypes, thus streamlining the transition from sketches to developed attractions.

      This collaboration serves as a significant endorsement of Adobe’s "commercially safe" positioning, which has been a core argument for Firefly since its inception, distinguishing it from competitors that rely on scraped data—a concern that has prompted public protests within the AI industry.

      3. A tool for tracking brand presence in ChatGPT

      On the enterprise side, Adobe introduced Brand Visibility, its inaugural product developed from its recent Semrush acquisition. This generative engine optimization (GEO) tool, which is a modern successor to SEO, monitors brand mentions across platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity, utilizing what Adobe claims is the largest database of its kind, comprising nearly 300 million real-world AI search queries.

      The motivation behind this launch is underscored by Adobe's data: AI traffic to US retail websites skyrocketed by 1,324 percent between October 2024 and May 2026, with travel traffic increasing by 2,215 percent. As consumers increasingly consult chatbots prior to visiting websites, Adobe anticipates that brands will invest to learn whether they are being recommended by chatbots or their competitors.

      4. AI ad creative for retail media networks

      Adobe also enhanced GenStudio, its AI "content supply chain," with a version tailored for commerce media networks—an expanding market where retailers sell advertising space based on their shopper data.

      The release relies heavily on synthetic data, incorporating a new Brand Intelligence “Simulate” skill that allows marketers to evaluate how content will resonate with AI-modeled audiences before incurring any costs, while Firefly Custom Models can now be accessed within Photoshop for creating brand-aligned visuals. This may lack glamour but reflects the direction of enterprise investments.

      5. Reskilling marketers affected by AI

      Lastly, Adobe and LinkedIn introduced AI Essentials for Marketers, a collection of free, role-based Linked