Adobe Is Adding AI Agent Features Across Its Product Lines, but Execs Emphasize Creators Have Choice of How They Use AI

Adobe announced at Adobe MAX 2026 that it is expanding the Adobe Creative Agent across Creative Cloud and Adobe Firefly, alongside local Model Context Protocol integrations that let users direct third-party agents to edit native project files in Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects. Incoming CEO Anil Chakravarthy, who takes over as president and CEO effective Dec. 1 as Shantanu Narayen moves to executive chair after nearly 20 years as CEO, said some users want nothing to do with AI while many others are excited by it, and Narayen said the tools aim to fuel creativity "without compromising your craft, your control or your rights." Adobe also said Firefly will offer models from ByteDance, Google, Kling, OpenAI and ElevenLabs in one place, previewed Firefly Video, Firefly Design (beta), Firefly Image editing tools and Firefly Builder (private beta), and expanded partnerships with Google and Microsoft.

Adobe https://variety.com/t/adobe/ is embracing AI in an effort to make its suite of creative tools more powerful and efficient than ever. But the company also recognizes that not all of its customers want to use AI in their work. In the kickoff keynote session for Adobe MAX 2026 https://variety.com/t/adobe-max-2026/ creativity conference, Adobe’s incoming CEO Anil Chakravarthy announced that the company is expanding the Adobe Creative Agent across Creative Cloud and Adobe Firefly — so they can hand off complex, multistep tasks to an AI assistant. The challenge for creative pros, Chakravarthy said in his keynote remarks, is “at a time when there’s such a flood of creative output, how do you stand out?” Some Adobe users don’t want “anything to do with AI” but “we’ve heard from many others who are interested — even excited — in it.” Adobe is in the midst of a CEO changeover: Chakravarthy, president of Adobe’s Customer Experience Orchestration business and worldwide field operations, is set to become the company’s next president and CEO effective Dec. 1. Shantanu Narayen, after nearly 20 years as CEO, will move into a role as Adobe’s executive chair. The company’s goal is to deliver tools that fuel creativity “without compromising your craft, your control or your rights,” Narayen told attendees. With AI, a key part of its approach is to give users the option to use AI-powered features or not, he said. At MAX, Adobe is previewing local Model Context Protocol integrations for Creative Cloud tools that will let users direct third-party agents they already use to make changes in their native project files in Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects. Adobe said it has expanded partnerships with Google and Microsoft and is building on collaborations with Anthropic and OpenAI. With Google, Adobe is putting its creative and productivity tools in more Google products and experiences, adding Google’s latest frontier AI models to Adobe’s tools and exploring new AI-powered editing capabilities for Photoshop with Google DeepMind. With Microsoft, Adobe is delivering optimized versions of Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and Substance 3D Painter beta for high-performance Arm-based Windows PCs, and access to Adobe Express’ quick and easy creation tools in Microsoft Photos on Windows. The company announced that Adobe Firefly, its AI creative studio, is bringing a choice of top industry AI models — including from such partners as ByteDance, Google, Kling, OpenAI and ElevenLabs — and the Adobe Creative Agent together in one place. For Firefly, the company plans to add “always-on agents” for creative workflows that can take on recurring tasks for example, organizing incoming assets and checking quality to preparing content for different channels — and continue working in the background even when creators step away. Adobe announced Firefly Video, a single workflow for assembling videos ranging from social content to short films, and Firefly Design beta , a new design editing space that brings together tools for illustration, image editing, animation, 3D and print on a single canvas. In addition, there’s Firefly Image, a set of new editing tools that give creators the control to change just one part of an image and keep everything else as it was with Edit Object, along with Relight and Retouch that pair prompt-based edits with manual precision. In addition, Adobe announced Firefly Builder available in private beta , a new tool that helps creators transform ideas into interactive prototypes, like a website, presentation or app, using natural language commands. In Adobe GenStudio, its toolset for marketers, a new conversational AI interface allows users to direct campaign planning, creation and activation while Coworker coordinates AI agents and workflows. The company said Adobe Brand Intelligence, an agent designed to enforce brand standards, is expanding its capabilities with Intelligent Reflow, letting teams automatically adapt designs to new sizes and layouts a feature also coming to Photoshop Illustrator and InDesign . The theme of Adobe MAX 2026, being held Nov. 10-12 in Miami Beach, is “Dream Big. Create Bigger.” The company recently announced has more than 1 billion active monthly users worldwide for its products. On Monday, Adobe announced a multiyear strategic partnership with Disney, becoming an “official AI innovation partner.” Under that agreement, Adobe technology will support “concept exploration” in Disney’s innovation labs as well as parks and cruise development pipelines using custom AI models and tools. RELATED: Disney Taps Adobe as ‘Official AI Innovation Partner’ Under Multiyear Pact https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/disney-adobe-official-ai-innovation-partner-1236943275/