Adobe brings AI image generation app Firefly to phones, adds partners

Adobe released its first dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) smartphone app on Tuesday that includes AI models from the company and partner firms, in a bid to tap into a growing trend of sharing AI images and videos over social media.

The new Firefly mobile app packages Adobe’s own AI model together with models from OpenAI and Google and is available on iOS and Android phones.

In addition, Adobe is integrating models from new partner firms Ideogram, Luma AI, Pika and Runway, which can be accessed in Firefly Boards, a product that is part of the Firefly web app.

Generating images that can easily be shared on social media has become a key driver of AI interest, with OpenAI's Ghibli-style AI images driving record traffic to the ChatGPT creator.

Adobe's mobile service will offer subscribers unlimited basic image generation from Adobe models, while it will charge extra for access to the company's premium models and those from its partners. The subscription cost will be the same as for the web versions of Firefly, which start at $10 (R181) per month.

The San Jose, California-based company had earlier released AI tools along with the mobile app version of its popular image-editing program Photoshop.

Adobe has not disclosed how much it pays the partner models on the Firefly app.

The company had promised users that its AI model is trained only on material that it has a legal right to use, with Adobe offering protection against copyright claims.

Ely Greenfield, Adobe's chief technology officer for digital media, said Adobe's approach has also gained some resonance among consumers.

"Even for many of our individual customers, that promise of the commercial safety and the story about how Firefly is trained continues to be a really important differentiator,"  he said.