Adobe Launches Cross-App Firefly AI Assistant, Expands Core Firefly AI Tooling

Back in October last year, Adobe debuted an early preview of a new AI assistant under the codename Project Moonlight, built to complete custom tasks for users by integrating with its existing suite of apps including Acrobat, Photoshop, and Express. That experimental project is now officially launching to users as Firefly AI Assistant.

The new Firefly AI Assistant will enter open public beta over the coming weeks. Adobe has not yet confirmed whether the AI assistant will be priced separately from Firefly’s existing credit-based subscription tiers.

Like most modern AI-powered creative tools, Firefly AI Assistant lets users explain their desired outcome in plain text, then handles the full workflow to deliver results. What differentiates the offering is its native cross-app functionality: Adobe confirms the assistant can operate across its entire line of creative tools, including Firefly, Photoshop, Premiere, Lightroom, Express, Illustrator, and more to complete multi-step end-to-end tasks.

Users can adjust the assistant’s outputs via text prompts, as well as tactile controls like buttons and sliders. Beyond generating assets, the tool can recommend next creative steps, coordinate tasks across different apps and workflows, and execute full multi-step processes, while always leaving space for users to step in and make manual edits at any point.

The assistant also surfaces custom controls tailored to the specific project a user is working on. For example, if you are editing a product photograph set in a forest, the tool may add a dedicated simple slider to quickly increase or decrease the volume of trees and foliage in the frame. Adobe notes the assistant will learn a user’s unique creative preferences over time, and adjust its suggestions to match those preferences.

Adobe is also rolling out pre-built multi-step "skills" for the assistant to handle common use cases. For instance, the built-in "social media assets" skill can automatically adapt existing images for different platform requirements by cropping or expanding canvases, optimizing file sizes, and organizing final outputs for easy access.

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Adobe has gradually rolled out AI-powered assistants for its individual apps including Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat over the past year. During Wednesday’s announcement, the company also shared that it is exploring deeper integration between its native AI tools and third-party large language models.

Competing creative platforms like Canva and Figma are also developing their own agentic AI workflow tools, but Adobe says its core competitive advantage is the ability to unify its already popular, established suite of creative tools into a single seamless AI experience.

“We have the opportunity with the Firefly AI assistant and with agentic experiences to remove some of the friction in learning this large catalog of tools we have and bring all of that value to our customers at their fingertips. And that’s the opportunity we have,” Alexandru Costin, vice president of AI and innovation for Adobe’s creativity and productivity business, told TechCrunch.

Alongside the new assistant launch, Adobe is adding a range of new features to its core Firefly AI tool. The platform’s AI video editor is gaining new audio tools including speech noise reduction, reverb adjustment, and music level controls, a new built-in color adjustment tool, and native integration with Adobe’s full stock media library. The company is also adding the Kling 3.0 and Kling 3.0 Omni models to Firefly’s library of supported third-party AI models.