Adobe is not dead: artificial intelligence has given it a second youth

You have surely heard of Adobe. It is the company that created Photoshop, the program for editing photos, and Acrobat, the one for PDF files. It has been the king of creative software for decades. But ever since artificial intelligence tools like Midjourney or DALL-E appeared, many thought Adobe was finished. Why pay for a Photoshop subscription if an AI can generate images just by typing a few words? Well, it turns out the reality is quite the opposite. Adobe is not only not dying because of AI, but it is making more money than ever thanks to it. The company has just presented record results: revenue of $6.62 billion in a single quarter, 13% more than last year. And its AI platform, called Firefly, already generates more than $250 million a year in recurring revenue. 75% of the Fortune 500 companies (the 500 largest in the world) already use Firefly for their design tasks. Adobe has gone from 700 to 850 million users in just one year. How did they do it? Basically, by integrating AI inside their classic programs instead of creating a separate product. Instead of competing with ChatGPT to generate images, Adobe added an AI assistant inside Photoshop that helps retouch photos, remove objects or change backgrounds just by telling it so. They also launched Adobe Express, a simplified and free version so that anyone can design without knowing how to use professional programs. The strategy is working: people keep using Photoshop and Premiere, but now with AI superpowers. The risk? That their CEO just left the company after 18 years and nobody knows who will replace him, right at the most important moment in its history. — Marta, for intermittent intelligence.