Adobe is turning Photoshop into an AI chatbot – here's how it will work

Amid all the controversy over AI in creative tech, it seems to me that we've yet to see the tech's most useful possible applications. Surely the real potential of AI in creative software is not to create images of ourselves as action figures but to streamline how we interact with the software.

Apply the text-based approach of AI image generation to a whole digital art program like Photoshop, and we'd be able to do repetitive everyday tasks without having to scroll through menus and drag sliders for every filter or tool we want to use.

Add voice input and we could tell Photoshop to invert a selection or increase the feathering by a certain number of pixels like Harrison Ford asking the computer to zoom in on an image in Blade Runner.

Well, it seems that Adobe is on it. Ok, not the Blade Runner bit yet, but the first part is coming.

What is agentic AI in Photoshop?

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Adobe thinks AI agents will soon become a natural part of creative professionals' workflows, helping to make us all more productive. It's already laid some of the groundwork in Photoshop with things like AI image generation and Distraction Removal.

At MAX London later this month, it's planning to demonstrate the next step: a 'creative agent' that will be accessible via a redesigned Actions panel.

The idea is that Photoshop to be able to analyse your work, spot opportunities for improvements and recommend context-aware edits, allowing you to apply actions with a single click. It says users should be able to use natural language to access more than 1,000 one-click actions.

For the moment, this sounds limited, and a bit like a more functional extension of the existing contextual task bar, which is sometimes useful but sometimes just distracting.

And although the user will still be in control, I don't much like the idea of Photoshop 'suggesting' how I could improve my work, unless its suggestions are based on my own previous decisions and workflows. Everyone's work could start to look a bit similar if we're all taking the same creative direction from Photoshop.

But Adobe sees these suggestions as just the foundation. Further ahead, its intention is that the creative agent will be able to help users learn Photoshop – which could save time trawling through our collection of Photoshop tutorials. And it may be able to handle repetitive tasks like preparing assets for export itself.

What I'm hoping for is that the ultimate goal will be a full natural language interface in which we can tell Photoshop what we want it to do, without having to select from a list of suggestions.

What about Premiere Pro?

Similar changes are afoot in Adobe's video editing software. Adobe recently released Media Intelligence in Premiere Pro, which automatically recognising objects and visual composition to help you find the shot you want.

The next step will be agents that understand users' media and can suggest actions. Again, Adobe says the agents to be able to teach users how to use the software.

"We envision a world where you can direct a creative agent to help you refine shot choices, craft rough cuts, assist with color, help mix audio, and more," Adobe says.

Adobe Express

A lot of Adobe's focus for agentic AI has been in Adobe Express, which makes sense since this is the product it aims at non-pros and 'solopreneurs', who may need more of a hand in terms of suggestions to get started.

Adobe says that in Express users can simply ask the agent to create and improve on a design, while still having the option to manually edit the results. For enterprise marketers, that could mean creating a new set of campaign collaterals by finding pre-approved on-brand materials made by the creative team.