Adobe Releases Image Generation Tech to Compete with Startups

In its latest push to compete with startups challenging its core business, Adobe announced on October 10 the release of new image-generation technology that can draw inspiration from an uploaded image and match its style. Image-generation technology from companies such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion has put Adobe's customer base of creative professionals who use its tools such as Photoshop in jeopardy.

The company based in San Jose, California, has responded by aggressively developing its own version of the technology and incorporating it into its software programmes. Adobe, which has assured its customers that the images they create will be free of legal challenges, claims that customers have used the tools to create three billion images, one billion of which were created in the last month alone.

The "Generative Match" feature will be included in the new generation of tools announced. It will, like Adobe's previous tool, allow users to generate an image from a few words of text. However, users will be able to upload as few as 10 to 20 images to serve as the basis for the generated images.

Ely Greenfield, Adobe's chief technology officer for digital media, said the company aims to let big brands upload a handful of photos of a product or character and then use generative technology to automatically make hundreds or thousands of images for various needs like websites, social media campaigns and print advertisements.