Adobe AI: Sensei and Firefly empower the many, challenge the few

Ahead of the first keynote of Adobe Summit taking place in Las Vegas the buzz around town is all about one thing. Artificial Intelligence, what else. The lingering question, on the back of AI's lengthy and frequently disappointing history, is 'will AI replace people'. The answer, while complicated, leans more to yes than no.

Throughout history, the introduction of new technologies has always disrupted and rendered obsolete certain jobs. Knocker uppers once fired hardened peas. Switchboard operators operated switchboards. And lamplighters…you get the idea.

While tough for those individuals, the introduction of better technology had (and has) a net benefit for everyone else. It's the few and the many.

Coming back to Adobe, its AI efforts are concentrated in two distinct products: Sensei, and Firefly (the latter is probably better known), and power multiple features across Adobe's product ecosystem, with the goals of enhancing creativity, productivity, and personalisation for people working in creative, document, and marketing workflows.

Sensei is Adobe's foundational AI and machine learning platform, designed to automate repetitive tasks, provide intelligent insights, and enhance user workflows. It's been around for years and serves as the AI backbone across Adobe's Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, and Experience Cloud.

It includes features like pattern recognition, predictive analytics, content tagging, and process automation. Sensei's job is to understand data—whether images, text, or customer behaviour—and turn it into actionable outcomes.

Meanwhile Firefly is Adobe's newer family of generative AI models, launched to create content like images, videos, and text from prompts. Unlike Sensei, which focuses on analysis and automation, Firefly is about generating new material, with an emphasis on being commercially safe (trained on licensed and public domain data).

It supports text-to-image generation, video creation, object manipulation, and more. Firefly is designed to be a "creative co-pilot," accelerating ideation and production. You may have heard that term Copilot before, because that's what Microsoft calls its similarly embedded AI.

Adobe's creative tools—like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and Lightroom—use both Sensei and Firefly to enhance artistic workflows. For example, in Photoshop Sensei is behind features like "Select Subject" (auto-selects objects with a click) and "Content-Aware Fill" (intelligently fills removed areas). Meanwhile, Firefly drives tasks like "Generative Fill," letting users add, remove, or replace elements via text prompts (e.g., "add a tree here"), and "Generative Expand," which extends image boundaries naturally.

Adobe Sensei's reception has been generally positive among users and industry observers since its introduction in November 2016. For example, a 2022 survey by Pfeiffer Consulting (referenced in some Adobe-focused blogs) noted 74% of creatives spent over half their time on non-creative tasks pre-Sensei, and many report a noticeable shift since its integration. 

On the other hand, Firefly is less mature, having entered the market in March 2023. While generally well received, here comes the rub: some creatives worry the AI push might overshadow human artistry, essentially "replacing" designers. 

This is where we have to come back to technology advancements, and the few and the many. Should that happen – and in many instances, it is, with an Auckland visual artist (and brother of a tech industry figure) reporting business falling off a cliff. While not directly related to Adobe products, commercial copywriters are similarly feeling the pinch, particularly with the release of the latest editions of generative AI. These exponentially exceed the capabilities of their predecessors.

What this means is that the many benefit, while yes, the few will find themselves sin struggle street. As Adobe is wont to introduce new products and product enhancements at Summit, chances are Firefly is going to take a step up.

Stand by for more intel, coming directly from Las Vegas.