Canva v Adobe: Let the games begin

Graphic design is one of the most exposed industries to the inexorable march of AI. Tools such as Craiyon, Midjourney and DALL·E2 already let anyone create high-quality images from a simple text prompt. It has left Adobe, known for graphics software such as Photoshop and Illustrator, with a new challenge.

Rather than having to contend with smaller competitors such as Canva (worth $US25.6 billion), which makes simple graphic-design tools, both firms have to contend with AI potentially eating their lunch.

And so at overlapping conferences 12,425 kilometres away from each other, the two companies – which both denied the event scheduling was anything other than a coincidence – made remarkably similar pitches.

Adobe last week unveiled Firefly, an image-generating tool, and an expansion of Sensei, an AI assistant already built into its marketing apps. The company hopes to let users turn photos and physical sketches into professional-looking graphics, seamlessly expand existing illustrations and do movie-style CGI video editing with just a text prompt.

A marketer could ask Sensei what their audience is interested in, create an AI-generated email and discount offer, and tweak it based on their responses. But for now, the most advanced AI tool at its disposal is a beta version of Firefly to make images, which is an already crowded space.

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Adobe is trying to differentiate itself with safety. It has tried to weed out biased images and trained its image generator on primarily stock pictures it has the rights to, while avoiding copyright owned by others. Asked why clients would care, given it is hard to prove that an AI tool was trained on a given image, Adobe’s Asia Pacific regional boss, Simon Tate, is blunt: “Well, they won’t care if they don’t care about being sued.”

(Getty Images, for example, has sued Stability AI, which makes a rival image generator, claiming it had used millions of its images without permission. But that claim and other AI lawsuits have not been tested.)

Meanwhile, Canva is hoping its approach to AI will keep its mostly Millennial audience – precisely the group that would pick up any new AI tools to hit the market – satisfied.

Canva has announced product updates that include new AI functions for its Visual Suite design tools. These include its copywriting assistant, Magic Write, text translation to 100 languages as well as Magic Design, Edit and Eraser for generating personalised templates and replacing parts of an image.

Canva co-founder and chief product officer Cameron Adams says the company wants to use the best technology available to help supercharge its offerings.

“AI is not this generic thing that just does everything,” Adams says.

“It’s something that you need to specifically address for your audience for their needs and their pain points. And you need to integrate it in the right way to offer the right experience that lets them do what they need to do.”

In other words, AI will sit alongside humans, not replace them. In Adobe-speak, it will be a “co-pilot”.

But both Adobe and Canva have a lot of work to do to reassure the creatives and graphic designers who, like Sorkin, are nervous.

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Ely Greenfield, chief technology officer in Adobe’s digital media business, says Sorkin’s view that a human will always do genuinely creative tasks better is right, and cites West Wing – a program that many critics thought became repetitive in the seasons after Sorkin left – as an example.

“The 301st episode, a junior writer could do that. Maybe tomorrow ChatGPT can do that. I don’t know,” Greenfield says.

“But the next great thing [Sorkin] is doing, ChatGPT is not going to do that.

“Aaron Sorkin is going to do that. He could leverage ChatGPT … in the creative process, just as today, he leverages a typewriter instead of writing the next one on cocktail napkins [as Sorkin famously did for A Few Good Men when he was a waiter].”

Whether Canva and Adobe’s 100 million-plus customers believe that analogy could be a multibillion-dollar test for both businesses.

Reporter Nick Bonyhady travelled as a guest of Adobe.

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.

Graphic design is one of the most exposed industries to the inexorable march of AI. Tools such as Craiyon, Midjourney and DALL·E2 already let anyone create high-quality images from a simple text prompt. It has left Adobe, known for graphics software such as Photoshop and Illustrator, with a new challenge.

Rather than having to contend with smaller competitors such as Canva (worth $US25.6 billion), which makes simple graphic-design tools, both firms have to contend with AI potentially eating their lunch.

And so at overlapping conferences 12,425 kilometres away from each other, the two companies – which both denied the event scheduling was anything other than a coincidence – made remarkably similar pitches.

Adobe last week unveiled Firefly, an image-generating tool, and an expansion of Sensei, an AI assistant already built into its marketing apps. The company hopes to let users turn photos and physical sketches into professional-looking graphics, seamlessly expand existing illustrations and do movie-style CGI video editing with just a text prompt.

A marketer could ask Sensei what their audience is interested in, create an AI-generated email and discount offer, and tweak it based on their responses. But for now, the most advanced AI tool at its disposal is a beta version of Firefly to make images, which is an already crowded space.

Loading

Adobe is trying to differentiate itself with safety. It has tried to weed out biased images and trained its image generator on primarily stock pictures it has the rights to, while avoiding copyright owned by others. Asked why clients would care, given it is hard to prove that an AI tool was trained on a given image, Adobe’s Asia Pacific regional boss, Simon Tate, is blunt: “Well, they won’t care if they don’t care about being sued.”

(Getty Images, for example, has sued Stability AI, which makes a rival image generator, claiming it had used millions of its images without permission. But that claim and other AI lawsuits have not been tested.)

Meanwhile, Canva is hoping its approach to AI will keep its mostly Millennial audience – precisely the group that would pick up any new AI tools to hit the market – satisfied.

Canva has announced product updates that include new AI functions for its Visual Suite design tools. These include its copywriting assistant, Magic Write, text translation to 100 languages as well as Magic Design, Edit and Eraser for generating personalised templates and replacing parts of an image.

Canva co-founder and chief product officer Cameron Adams says the company wants to use the best technology available to help supercharge its offerings.

“AI is not this generic thing that just does everything,” Adams says.

“It’s something that you need to specifically address for your audience for their needs and their pain points. And you need to integrate it in the right way to offer the right experience that lets them do what they need to do.”

In other words, AI will sit alongside humans, not replace them. In Adobe-speak, it will be a “co-pilot”.

But both Adobe and Canva have a lot of work to do to reassure the creatives and graphic designers who, like Sorkin, are nervous.

Loading

Ely Greenfield, chief technology officer in Adobe’s digital media business, says Sorkin’s view that a human will always do genuinely creative tasks better is right, and cites West Wing – a program that many critics thought became repetitive in the seasons after Sorkin left – as an example.

“The 301st episode, a junior writer could do that. Maybe tomorrow ChatGPT can do that. I don’t know,” Greenfield says.

“But the next great thing [Sorkin] is doing, ChatGPT is not going to do that.

“Aaron Sorkin is going to do that. He could leverage ChatGPT … in the creative process, just as today, he leverages a typewriter instead of writing the next one on cocktail napkins [as Sorkin famously did for A Few Good Men when he was a waiter].”

Whether Canva and Adobe’s 100 million-plus customers believe that analogy could be a multibillion-dollar test for both businesses.

Reporter Nick Bonyhady travelled as a guest of Adobe.

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.