Adobe’s strategy to feed its AI and survive intelligent photo editing
Would you sell photos of your hands and feet for money? No, they won't go to OnlyFans. It is the curious request made to its users by one of the major US software houses: so Adobe has decided to accelerate the pace and train its AI
Not enough Canva, which with its tools for layout and graphics has begun to erode small market shares from those who have founded an empire on professional graphics suites (Canva itself has just acquired Affinity, a series of programs for creativity and design that can be considered alternatives to Illustrator , Photoshop and InDesign ), now artificial intelligence, or AI, has also started to worry Adobe.
WHY ADOBE FEARS AI
Anyone, thanks to intelligent algorithms, can now retouch photos and videos, as well as edit frames in sequence. Actions that only up to 12 months ago required the purchase of programs such as Adobe's Photoshop and Premiere. But above all they required a lot, a lot of experience, given that those programs are professional, used by the greatest directors and editors.
In short, Adobe's core business (market capitalization: 216.96 billion) will not be affected by either Canva or AI, but these are certainly innovations capable of taking away from it that audience of "Sunday" graphic designers and artists who could leave distract from more immediate and above all economic solutions.
THE CHASE
This is why Adobe is also hastily following the lead of the largest software houses that are shoveling billions into the AI furnace. And it does so by applying new technologies in the areas it knows best, starting with files in PDF format.
In mid-February it launched an artificial intelligence assistant for Acrobat Reader capable of producing summaries and answering questions about PDFs and other documents. Currently in beta, it will later be the centerpiece of a subscription plan.
ADOBE BUYS VIDEOS TO FEED ITS AI
And then of course there is the photo editing and video editing sector. As we know well, AIs must devour as much material as possible to train, but this entails considerable risks in terms of copyright.
A risk that lies at the basis of themulti-million dollar agreement between Apple and Shutterstock , one of the largest photo and video libraries. Cupertino will shell out an undisclosed amount (rumors speak of something between 25 and 50 million dollars) to exploit that content to train its artificial intelligence.
HOW MUCH DO YOU EARN BY SELLING YOUR VIDEOS TO ADOBE?
Adobe has chosen another path for its AI: as reported by Bloomberg , the US software house is contacting its users in order to offer them up to 120 dollars for very banal videos, which portray people carrying out daily actions such as walking, play sports or talk directly in the room.
According to the business newspaper, “payment for such clips amounts, on average, to about $2.62 per minute of video sent, although it could be as high as about $7.25.” The company has so far purchased the images externally, paying for them, again according to what Bloomberg reports, between 6 and 16 cents on the dollar.
ADOBE WANTS PHOTOS OF HANDS AND FEET…
It makes you smile that among the requests there are "simple anatomical shots of feet, hands or eyes", which is not to satisfy some strange fetishism but to help artificial intelligence create virtual counterparts of human beings truly similar to real ones.
Currently, in fact, it is possible to understand if a product is made with artificial intelligence by focusing one's attention on the eyes, often soulless, of the portrayed subject, or on the hands or feet, which sometimes have more fingers than necessary or anomalous positions . The "Achilles' heel" of AI are some anatomical parts that it has greater difficulty reproducing: this is why Adobe has issued this bizarre request to the people of the Web.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/strategia-adobe-ia/ on Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:10:24 +0000.