The New Adobe Firefly AI Is All About Video Editing

Adobe has been on a journey for years to turn itself into an AI behemoth, and its latest round of Firefly AI updates brings its dreams one step closer to fruition. At Adobe Max on Tuesday, the company announced a slew of Firefly AI updates focused on building out its video-editing capabilities.

Firefly is getting an upgraded video editor. Like other creative AI companies, Adobe has been building up its AI video capabilities over the past year, with video models made both in-house and by third-party AI companies. Now, the new interface incorporates the Firefly AI assistant, which is in beta, in a bigger way. There’s a dedicated ideation panel and more ways to storyboard ideas.

It’s a more feature-packed alternative to beginner or everyday video editors like CapCut, without overloading creators with all the features of professional-grade Adobe Premiere. Part of that push is integrating agentic AI, or agents that can handle editing tasks for you autonomously. And there are a lot of AI agents coming to Adobe’s programs.

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That beginner-to-intermediate design is, well, by design — Adobe is aiming to lure in folks without decades of video-editing know-how with its generative AI features. It fits with Adobe’s larger goals; it wants to build Firefly for video and image editors the same way it built Photoshop — to be the “career partner” for creators.

Firefly Design

Another new project is Firefly Design, an AI-heavy version of a graphic design program that incorporates print, motion graphics and 3D. The intelligence assistant is a big part of the interface, where you can use text prompts to come up with variations of different scenes.

There are a few new Firefly AI image tools, and their names describe their uses well: relight, retouch and edit object. These are more precise controls, keeping with Adobe’s goal of giving AI enthusiasts more ability to edit their video content. There are also new quick actions, or shortcuts, including a video thumbnail generator that’s based on your video.

And if you remember Project Graph from last year’s Adobe Max, it’s back in a public preview as Firefly Graph. This is a node-based editing system, where you can create individual “nodes” and connect them to create an entire system, or ecosystem, of content. It won’t be for everyone, but it’s aimed at creative teams who want to visualize large workflows.

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Katelyn is a reporter with CNET covering artificial intelligence, including chatbots, image and video generators. Her work explores how new AI technology is infiltrating our lives, shaping the content we consume on social media and affecting the people behind the screens. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in media and journalism. You can reach her at kchedraoui@cnet.com. See full bio