Adobe’s conversational AI agent is a mediocre design intern | The VergeSkip to main contentThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.The VergeThe Verge logo.TechReviewsScienceEntertainmentAIPolicyNotificationsNotificationsHamburger Navigation ButtonThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.NotificationsNotificationsHamburger Navigation ButtonNavigation DrawerThe VergeThe Verge logo.Login / Sign UpcloseCloseSearchTechExpandAmazonAppleFacebookGoogleMicrosoftSamsungBusinessSee all techReviewsExpandSmart Home ReviewsPhone ReviewsTablet ReviewsHeadphone ReviewsSee all reviewsScienceExpandSpaceEnergyEnvironmentHealthSee all scienceEntertainmentExpandTV ShowsMoviesAudioSee all entertainmentAIExpandOpenAIAnthropicSee all AIPolicyExpandAntitrustPoliticsLawSecuritySee all policyGadgetsExpandLaptopsPhonesTVsHeadphonesSpeakersWearablesSee all gadgetsVerge ShoppingExpandBuying GuidesDealsGift GuidesSee all shoppingGamingExpandXboxPlayStationNintendoSee all gamingStreamingExpandDisneyHBONetflixYouTubeCreatorsSee all streamingTransportationExpandElectric CarsAutonomous CarsRide-sharingScootersSee all transportationFeaturesVerge VideoExpandTikTokYouTubeInstagramPodcastsExpandDecoderThe VergecastVersion HistoryNewslettersArchivesStoreVerge Product UpdatesSubscribeFacebookThreadsInstagramYoutubeRSSThe VergeThe Verge logo.Adobe’s conversational AI agent is a mediocre design internNotificationsNotificationsComments DrawerNotificationsCommentsLoading commentsGetting the conversation ready...TechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechAICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AIReportCloseReportPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ReportAdobe’s conversational AI agent is a mediocre design internThe Firefly AI Assistant isn’t as good as a professional human designer or photo editor, but it’s fun to watch it work.by Jess WeatherbedCloseJess WeatherbedNews ReporterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Jess WeatherbedMay 29, 2026, 10:00 AM UTCLinkShareGiftIt explained the process of how it made these edits beautifully, i’m just not terribly impressed by the results. | Images by Jess Weatherbed / The VergeJess WeatherbedCloseJess WeatherbedPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Jess Weatherbed is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.AI image tools rarely make me feel like I’m part of the creative process. They are, afterall, mostly designed so that people with no design experience can type in a few words and get back a usable result. So I was pleasantly surprised by Adobe’s latest take on an AI image assistant: it’s a bot designed to take away some busywork, while still granting you creative control.Unlike AI generators that are specifically designed to make and edit images or video, Adobe’s Firefly AI Assistant, which I’ve been testing in beta, is more like a multitasking middleman that can operate Adobe’s design apps for you. On its website, Adobe says that you can just “tell Firefly AI Assistant (beta) what you need, and it will use tools from apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and more to complete multistep projects in moments.”The user interface looks like a typical chatbot. There’s a text box you can type prompts into, and a plus symbol for uploading media files. It doesn’t use the actual Adobe apps on your computer, but it has access to common capabilities like masking, object detection, and image generation. The AI assistant is designed to be conversational, so you can ask the chatbot to “make this photo more colorful,” and it’ll do so while explaining its actions.PreviousNext1/3Here’s an unedited photo of myself that I used for testing. I intentionally chose a shot with unusual lighting. Image: Jess Weatherbed / The VergePhoto edits and illustrations completed by Adobe’s AI are convincing at a glance. It changed my hair color in one photo and then the background location and lighting in another. The results aren’t perfect: some had colors that were too vivid or alterations that hadn’t been properly blended into their surrounding environments. But I suspect the average person wouldn’t assume that my results were made or manipulated with AI — it just looks like the work of a novice designer.What actually makes the Firefly AI Assistant intriguing is how it interacts with you. I gave it a picture of my cat by a window and asked it to make the sky cloudless and sunny. It didn’t just go “sure” and give me the edited image. The chatbot described the scene in the pre-edited image with surprising detail (it correctly identified that my cat is a Maine Coon despite the photo mostly just showing his ass), and then explained how it’s going to achieve the results I’d requested. It mentioned specific tools from Photoshop and Lightroom using established editing terminology, explaining the process step-by-step. You don’t actually get to see the image being edited in real-time, but the chatbot will tell you which features it’s using to achieve each result.Here’s an unedited shot of my cat, Trevor, observing his kingdom… Image: Jess Weatherbed / The Verge…and the results of me asking the chatbot to “remove the clouds in this image and make the sky look sunny and bright.” Image: Jess Weatherbed / The VergeThe Firefly AI Assistant is also surprisingly forthcoming about its limitations. When I asked it to separate objects from a JPG file into separate layers, Firefly said it couldn’t do so, but offered two different courses of action for splitting the image into separate elements, explaining the pros and cons of both. After I chose one, the bot then described its editing process, including the fact that what it was doing wasn’t working. “I notice the gaussian blur approach isn’t giving me true transparent cutouts — it’s outputting full-image PNGs,” it wrote. The chatbot redirected itself and used masks and Adobe’s image cropping and resizing tool instead.PreviousNext1/2It really started falling over itself when I asked it to split objects in an image out into separate elements. Image: Jess Weatherbed / The VergeYou can also ask the chatbot to add new objects into images, akin to Photoshop’s Generative Fill or Google’s Magic Editor features. It didn’t hesitate to add cigars, doobies (erm, “hand-rolled cigarettes”) and even guns to my photographs, but refused to generate anything outright illegal. I could make an obviously fake album cover of myself pointing a gun at the “camera,” but not make myself look like I’m shooting anyone. The results for these sort of edits are also visually subpar compared to asking for things that won’t necessarily require generative AI tools, such as lighting adjustments, but I wouldn’t say they’re outright bad — they’re just not good enough that they could fool me. It also refused to alter the shape or size of my face and body, or put me in revealing clothing — something Grok could use some notes on.Prompting chatbots usually makes me feel like I’m asking a theme park mascot for directions — the constant enthusiasm is unnerving, and not at all like talking to another adult human being. The Firefly Assistant is still guilty of gushing out pointless and unnecessary praise (I do not need it to tell me that my edit request is a “great idea”), but for the most part, what it’s saying is actually useful.When the bot needs additional information, you’ll be prompted for it. I asked it to turn a photograph I took of two cocktails into an illustration-style graphic that can be used to advertise a bar on social media. It then asked me what platforms I was planning to post the design on, providing a list of options like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook that I could select, alongside the standard pixel dimensions for such content. If I wasn’t already familiar with Instagram Square posts being 1080x1080p, I’d have come away from that experience having learned something.This is the most intriguing way a creative chatbot has interacted with me so far. By asking it to make changes I never bothered to learn how to do myself, the AI assistant shows me where I need to focus on building those skills by explaining its own workings. I’d say it’s less useful than asking Google Search or YouTube for tutorials, but those services won’t complete the task for you while you learn. I personally enjoy manual creative processes too much to ever delegate that to a chatbot in the real world, but for folks who want to make edits that wouldn’t otherwise be worth their time? I can see the appeal for this.Another unaltered shot of myself and Trevor, but you know what would make this cooler? Image: Jess Weatherbed / The VergeSmoking, obviously. Image: Jess Weatherbed / The VergeCanva also recently launched its own conversational design agent. That too, is rife with tendencies to communicate through flowery language and infantilizing praise, but it doesn’t explain its working process like Adobe’s chatbot does, and the results didn’t quite hold up to what I saw Adobe’s producing. You just give the Canva assistant instructions, and keep prompting until you’re happy with the outcome. For those willing to learn, Adobe’s tool may actually help to demystify some design and editing basics while delivering on your requests.But Adobe is mostly pitching this Firefly assistant as a means to save creative professionals time by undertaking labor-intensive tasks. I have middling editing skills at best, and I don’t feel the chatbot would be useful to me unless I’m happy to pump out sub-quality work. For people with very established design skills, I fear using this would feel more like babysitting a new intern than having a helpful colleague. It may become easier to pitch this AI assistant to creatives if it can deliver work that’s indistinguishable from something professionally edited. But for now, it’s far too much of a novice.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Jess WeatherbedCloseJess WeatherbedNews ReporterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Jess WeatherbedAdobeCloseAdobePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AdobeAICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AIAnalysisCloseAnalysisPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AnalysisCreatorsCloseCreatorsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All CreatorsReportCloseReportPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ReportTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechMost PopularMost PopularKia’s flagship EV has a battery problemThe golden age of handheld gaming is already overThey’ve finally made the Oura Ring smaller and lighterValve raises Steam Deck prices by more than $200What’s next for Microsoft’s Surface PCs?The Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. 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Adobe’s Firefly AI Assistant is presented as a conversational agent designed to facilitate multitasking within Adobe’s design applications, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, operating as a middleman that executes multi-step creative projects upon user instruction. The assistant utilizes a chatbot interface that allows users to input prompts and upload media files, accessing core capabilities like object detection, masking, and image generation. Unlike dedicated image or video generators, Firefly positions itself as an interactive tool that explains its operations, using established editing terminology to detail the steps it takes to achieve requested modifications. For instance, when asked to alter a photograph, the assistant provides a descriptive breakdown of its intended actions, detailing the tools and processes involved, which offers a pedagogical value by demystifying certain creative editing basics for the user.

However, the quality of the results and the interaction style introduce significant caveats to the assistant’s utility. While the AI can perform superficial edits, such as adjusting lighting or changing background elements, the output is not always flawless, sometimes resulting in overly vivid colors or imperfect blending that suggests novice execution. The system demonstrated limitations when handling more complex tasks, particularly in separating objects from an image into distinct layers, forcing it to navigate between different methods and express its internal struggles regarding the resulting outputs. Furthermore, when asked to generate new elements within an image, the assistant exhibited both boundaries and flexibility; it hesitated to generate content deemed illegal or overtly inappropriate, and it refused alterations to fundamental human features like facial structure or body shape.

The agent's conversational approach, characterized by enthusiastic or flowery praise, is noted as occasionally distracting, though the information provided is generally useful. A noteworthy aspect of the interaction is the system’s propensity to ask for clarifying information, proactively prompting the user for necessary context, such as identifying required social media dimensions when creating an illustration for advertising purposes. This interactive element suggests that the assistant functions less as a direct replacement for expert execution and more as a guide, directing users toward understanding the underlying mechanics of design and editing skills. Ultimately, the assessment suggests that the Firefly AI Assistant is currently more suited for those with limited editing skills or for automating straightforward, less critical tasks, as its performance still falls short of providing the indistinguishable quality expected from a professional designer, positioning it somewhat more like an intern than a trusted colleague for seasoned creatives.