By the late 2000s, the digital landscape had already undergone significant evolution. At the time, software like Adobe Flash was revolutionizing web animation and interactivity, enabling designers to create immersive experiences that felt cutting-edge.

The excitement of crafting animated websites, interactive banners, and multimedia tutorials defined the era. What once required painstaking frame-by-frame animation or complex coding could now be achieved with intuitive tools, making digital creativity more accessible than ever.

Now, that transformation has accelerated even further. Adobe, the company that once provided the very tools that shaped early digital design, is leading a new wave of innovation. With the introduction of Adobe Firefly—including the latest Firefly Video Model in public beta—alongside Sensei-powered automation and AI-enhanced features in Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro, Adobe is cementing its position as both a “leader in AI and a central force in the creative ecosystem.”

However, competition in this AI-driven era is fierce. Platforms like Canva’s Magic Studio, Midjourney, and Figma’s AI-powered design assistants are vying for dominance, each offering creators innovative tools to streamline their workflows. For Adobe, setting itself apart in an industry teeming with options is no small challenge.

At the LEAP tech conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Luc Dammann, President of Adobe EMEA, discussed the company’s latest artificial intelligence (AI) advancements. The conversation, amid the palpable energy of an industry on the brink of transformation, shed light on Adobe’s approach to generative AI (Gen AI) and its commitment to ethical practices.

Adobe was recognized as Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company in 2024 for embracing generative AI right away. Unlike many companies leveraging vast, unregulated data pools, Adobe has taken a fundamentally different approach—training its Gen AI model, Firefly, exclusively on licensed and public domain content.  Dammann insists this strategy is necessary for building trust in AI-generated content.

“Our approach to GenAI –  for enterprises or the creative community – is underpinned by three principles: accountability, responsibility, and transparency.”

This led Adobe Firefly to be trained only on content that Adobe has permission to use, including licensed content from Adobe Stock and public domain content. As a result, the content generated by Firefly can be used commercially with no risk of copyright or IP infringement, protecting the creative community’s rights and works while ensuring enterprise customers can fully trust that the outputs and content they generate can be used externally.  

Dammann elaborated, “For example, our policies require that all training data for our Gen AI Firefly models be licensed or in the public domain. In addition, the training data must comply with our IP guidelines and pass our multi-layered, continuous review and moderation process.”

Content Creation & Marketing 

One of Adobe’s most impactful AI-driven solutions is the launch of Adobe GenStudio for Performance Marketing. Companies face two challenges: Customers expect hyper-personalized experiences, but marketing budgets are tightening. This places immense pressure on marketing and creative teams to produce vast content across multiple channels.

GenStudio for Performance Marketing is a single, self-service application that marketers can use to create on-brand high-performing content for campaigns, including paid social ads, display ads, banners, marketing emails, and more at speed and scale.  

Users can locate brand-approved assets and create content variations with Gen AI tools such as Adobe Firefly, and third-party large language models. These tools can generate  email and advertising copy based on brand guidelines, toolkits, and already-approved assets. 

It means marketers can self-serve, creative teams can focus on higher- value creative tasks rather than fielding time-consuming requests for content variations for different markets, channels, and formats, and the entire content supply chain of an enterprise can be more productive and efficient in creating the personalized content their customers crave.

The results speak for themselves. “We’ve reduced the time it takes to create thousands of copy and content variations for email campaigns from three weeks to three days,” Dammann noted. Beyond cost saving, efficiency, and the personalization capabilities of GenStudio have led to significant improvements in open rates, click-throughs, and conversions.

Enhancing Creative Workflows with AI

When asked how AI features like Generative Fill and Generative Expand in Photoshop have impacted the creative workflows of professionals, Dammann explained, “The number one constraint creative professionals face is time. By embedding AI into our creative products, we’ve drastically reduced time-intensive, tedious tasks, freeing up more time for high-value creativity.”

Being able to easily expand an image in any direction with Generative Expand and add new or remove unwanted elements from images using Generative Fill is a “game-changer” for creatives and their workflows.  

But what about concerns that AI could replace human creativity? Some creatives fear that AI could diminish the value of human artistry, especially following Adobe’s tagline “skip the photoshoot.” Addressing this, Dammann says the company remains steadfast in believing that AI is a tool to amplify, not replace, human ingenuity. “We believe that AI will enable creatives to realize their vision with greater speed, agility, and precision while freeing them from the time-consuming, manual processes that slow them down.”

Talking about the enthusiasm surrounding adopting and integrating creative AI platforms in the Middle East compared to other global markets, Dammann noted, “The region is home to ambitious, forward-thinking companies committed to delivering exceptional digital experiences. The rapid digital transformation of established enterprises, coupled with the rise of digitally native businesses, makes it an ideal proving ground for generative AI adoption.”

For AI  to accelerate creative and enterprise processes, it needs to be embedded into familiar workflows. Doing so flattens the adoption curve as users don’t need to learn new skills or work differently. It also provides tangible “wow” moments when they see how much more productive they are with AI amplifying their output. Dammann beamed with optimism for an AI-driven and AI-enhanced creative economy in the coming days.