From chatbot to agent: what Firefly AI Assistant can do

After two years of gradually expanding the Firefly family of generative models, Adobe is making a fundamental shift. Firefly AI Assistant is not another filter or image generator — it is an agentic AI system that listens to the user, understands context, and independently selects the tools needed to achieve a goal.

Alexandru Costin, Vice President of AI and Innovation at Adobe, explained the company's approach clearly in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat: "We want creators to state the goal, and let the Firefly assistant — with deep understanding of all of Adobe's professional and generative tools — bring the tools directly into the conversation."

In practice, this means that instead of manually switching between dozens of applications, the user simply describes the outcome in natural language. The assistant then determines which programs need to be launched, in what order, and executes the entire process. The system works with approximately 100 tools and skills, ranging from image and video generation to precise photo editing and design review via Frame.io.

Firefly AI Assistant builds on the research prototype Project Moonlight, which Adobe first demonstrated at the MAX conference in autumn 2025. "We took all the learnings from Moonlight, engaged customers, looked at internal data, and developed a more ambitious architecture," Costin confirmed.

Native formats and a continuum of control

One of the key competitive advantages Adobe emphasizes is the preservation of native formats. The agent's outputs use standard Adobe files — PSD, AI, PRPROJ — meaning the creator can take over the result in a classic desktop application at any time and continue with manual, pixel-perfect editing.

"We always imagine a continuum where you can have fully conversational edits and pixel-perfect edits, and as a creator you decide where you want to be," Costin described. This approach is meant to reassure professional users who fear losing control over their work.

The system includes pre-built Creative Skills — multi-step workflow templates for tasks such as portrait retouching or generating visuals for social media. The user launches them with a single prompt and then customizes them to their own style. The assistant gradually learns the creator's preferences and the type of content they work on so it can make contextually relevant decisions.

Pricing and business model: credits and subscription

For Czech and European users, the key information is about availability and price. Firefly AI Assistant will require an active Adobe subscription that includes the relevant applications. For example, if you want to use the cloud features of Photoshop, you must have a plan that includes the Photoshop SKU. Generative actions consume the existing pool of generative credits that are part of the subscription.

"As we better understand the value of this tool — and the costs of running the 'brain,' the conversational engine — things may change," Costin admitted. For investors, however, the numbers are already interesting: Adobe announced year-on-year revenue growth of 10% to $6.4 billion in March 2026. Annual recurring revenue from standalone AI products and add-ons reached $125 million, and CEO Shantanu Narayen predicted they would double within nine months.

Third parties, Chinese models, and questions of commercial safety

Adobe is expanding the Firefly ecosystem with third-party models. Newly added are Kling 3.0 and Kling 3.0 Omni from the Chinese company Kuaishou, bringing Firefly a total of more than 30 models. Kling 3.0 focuses on fast video production with audio-visual synchronization, while the Omni variant adds professional control over shot length, camera angle, and character movement across multi-shot sequences.

The integration of a Chinese model in the current geopolitical situation raises questions. Costin responded diplomatically: "We think choice is what we want to offer our customers." Adobe distinguishes between its own first-party Firefly models — trained on licensed Adobe Stock content and public domain materials — and partner models, which carry a different commercial safety profile.

For European companies and Czech agencies, there is an important aspect here: first-party Firefly models offer commercial indemnity, while the level of protection for third-party models varies. Adobe addresses transparency through the Content Credentials system — metadata and digital fingerprints that reveal to the user how specific content was created. In the agentic era, when the assistant autonomously selects a model, this trail is crucial for legal certainty, especially in the context of the EU AI Act and requirements for algorithmic decision-making transparency.

Collaboration with Nvidia and the infrastructure of the future

Adobe is actively collaborating with Nvidia on infrastructure for long-running agentic workflows. Costin mentioned the technologies Open Shell and NeMo Claw, which enable efficient operation of long agentic processes in a sandboxed environment. "It's not yet available in the production version, but we are actively exploring it," he clarified.

For Nvidia, which is building an ecosystem of enterprise AI agent platforms with partners such as Adobe, Salesforce, and SAP, this collaboration could be a significant reference point in the creative vertical. For Adobe, it is a recognition that the computational demands of agentic AI — where a single user request can trigger dozens of model and tool calls — exceed what a software company can build on its own.

Other news: Color Mode for Premiere Pro and Frame.io Drive

Besides the main announcement, Adobe introduced several other features. Color Mode in Premiere Pro is entering public beta and promises color corrections tailored to the way editors think, not dedicated colorists. Adobe states that participants in the private beta even "started enjoying color correction" — suggesting a democratization of one of the most feared disciplines in post-production.

Frame.io Drive solves a chronic problem of distributed video production: media transfer between teams. The desktop application mounts Frame.io projects as a local disk, with media streamed on demand and local cache ensuring smooth playback. Content remains exclusively within the Frame.io ecosystem and is not shared with third parties — which may be important for companies dealing with GDPR and personal data protection.

What this means for Czech creators and the European market

For Czech graphic designers, editors, and marketing teams, Firefly AI Assistant brings the promise of significantly speeding up routine tasks. Instead of manually copying edits between dozens of files, a creator can describe their intent and let the AI time animations, generate visual variants, or prepare versions for different channels.

The European context, however, places specific demands. Alongside the aforementioned EU AI Act and GDPR, there is the question of language support. While the main interface of Firefly AI Assistant runs in English, Adobe has gradually expanded the localization of its tools in the past. For the Czech market, it will be crucial how quickly Czech language support can be integrated into the conversational interface — especially for agentic functions, where prompt precision directly affects output quality.

Price-wise, Adobe remains in the premium segment. Basic Creative Cloud plans start at a few hundred Czech crowns per month, while professional packages with advanced AI credits go into the thousands. For Czech freelancers and small studios, it will be important to monitor how the consumption of generative credits evolves for more demanding agentic workflows.

Conclusion: Adobe bets on the trust of professionals

Firefly AI Assistant is not just a technological upgrade — it is a strategic signal that Adobe views agentic AI as a fundamental transformation of creative work, not just another feature. The company is fighting on multiple fronts: against well-funded startups like Runway and Pika, against aggressive AI integration in Canva, and against the pressure from large language models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

Costin aptly summarized the situation: "We want to help our customers become — instead of those who do all the work — creative directors who guide the assistant in realizing their visions." Whether creators embrace this new role, and whether Wall Street rewards them for it, will decide not only the future of Adobe, but the shape of an entire industry that is learning to create alongside machines.