Ep.5 Adobe: To Gen AI or Not

Adobe, as a company with a large portion of its customer base being creatives, has a unique position and questions facing it - how can it integrate AI without alienating its customers? In this episode, we explore the evolution of Adobe, from conception to March 2022, and reflect on the importance of research and development.

Sound Bites

"How do we use GenAI?"

"General AI is nothing new."

"Adobe started in 1982."

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Takeaways

• Adobe's journey reflects the evolution of technology and creativity.

• The shift to a subscription model was crucial for Adobe's financial stability.

• GenAI presents both opportunities and ethical challenges for artists.

• Adobe's acquisition strategy has historically strengthened its market position.

• AI integration in Adobe tools enhances user experience and creativity.

• The importance of internal research and development in tech companies.

• Gavin Miller's vision for AI at Adobe was pivotal for its strategy.

• The competitive landscape for Adobe includes emerging AI tools and platforms.

• Ethical considerations in AI art generation are increasingly relevant.

• Adobe's future success hinges on its ability to innovate and adapt.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Technical Challenges

09:08 AI Development and Adobe's Innovations

12:38 The Role of Ethics in AI

16:22 The Future of AI and Adobe's Strategy

23:52 AI in Image Generation

25:32 Adobe's Struggles and Market Positioning

27:22 Ethical Concerns in AI Art Creation

29:04 Adobe's Strategic Choices: Partner, Acquire, or Develop?

35:57 Adobe's Unique Position and Future Prospects

42:01 The Impact of Generative AI on Creativity

Corrections & Clarifications

• At 3:30, when Mirah mentioned a suite of products Adobe had acquired, Illustrator was incorrectly bundled with Photoshop. Illustrator was one of the few “inventions” that Adobe’s co-founder, John Warnock, developed to help his wife, who was a graphic designer. Photoshop, however, was acquired in Jan 1995

• At 4:33, when discussing labelled vs. unlabelled datasets, Ale highlighted the importance of labelled datasets and how companies can learn from labelled images. This type of data is typically used in supervised learning. And unlabelled data can be used in unsupervised learning

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Keywords

Adobe, AI, Generative AI, Subscription Model, Ethics, Digital Media, Technology, Innovation, Creative Tools, Business Strategy

Facts

• Gupta, Sunil, Rajiv Lal, and Allison Ciechanover. "Adobe: GenAI Opportunity or Threat?" Harvard Business School Case 525-052, April 2025.

• This Avocado Armchair Could be the Future of AI - Will Douglas Heaven

• Goodfellow, I. et al., 2014. Generative adversarial nets. In Advances in neural information processing systems. pp. 2672–2680.

• Harold Cohen: ‘Once upon a time there was an entity named Aaron’

• AI-Generated Art Won a Prize. Artists Aren't Happy.

• Vaswani, Ashish, et al. "Attention Is All You Need." ArXiv, 2017, https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762. Accessed 10 Jul. 2025.

• John McCarthy - American mathematician and computer scientist

• Xerox Parc’s Engineers on How They Invented the Future

• ImageNet

• Evolution of the PostScript Language

• What is data labeling?

• March 2024 - Remove red eye in Lightroom

• Firm for Analyzing Web Traffic Bought by Adobe for $1.8 Billion

• Adobe Acquires Stock Content Marketplace Fotolia For $800M In Cash

• The Rise and Fall of Adobe Inc.

• Adobe Subsidiaries

• What is supervised learning?

• What is unsupervised learning?

• It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas: Adobe Lays off 680+