Adobe Puts AI Agents Everywhere, but Says Creators Keep the Off Switch

By Daniel Okafor

Adobe will expand its Adobe Creative Agent across Creative Cloud and Firefly, letting users hand off complex, multistep tasks to an AI assistant — whether every customer wants one or not. Incoming CEO Anil Chakravarthy announced the move in the kickoff keynote at Adobe MAX 2026, the company's creativity conference running Nov. 10-12 in Miami Beach under the theme "Dream Big. Create Bigger."

Chakravarthy, currently president of Adobe's Customer Experience Orchestration business and worldwide field operations, framed the problem plainly. "At a time when there's such a flood of creative output, how do you stand out?" he said in his keynote remarks. He acknowledged the split in Adobe's user base: some want nothing to do with AI, but "we've heard from many others who are interested — even excited — in it."

That tension defines the announcement. Adobe is shipping agents, models and automated workflows at scale, while insisting the choice to use them stays with the creator.

Who is running Adobe now?

The keynote doubled as a transition announcement. Chakravarthy becomes president and CEO effective Dec. 1. Shantanu Narayen, after nearly 20 years as CEO, moves to executive chair.

Narayen used his remarks to draw the company's line on AI. The goal, he told attendees, is tools that fuel creativity "without compromising your craft, your control or your rights." Users get AI-powered features as an option, not a mandate.

What's new in Firefly and Creative Cloud?

The product news is dense. Adobe Firefly, the company's AI creative studio, will offer a choice of industry AI models — including from ByteDance, Google, Kling, OpenAI and ElevenLabs — alongside the Adobe Creative Agent in one place.

The announcements include:

• "Always-on agents" for Firefly that handle recurring tasks — organizing incoming assets, quality checks, preparing content for channels — and keep working in the background when creators step away.
• Firefly Video, a single workflow for assembling videos from social content to short films.
• Firefly Design (beta), a design editing space combining illustration, image editing, animation, 3D and print on one canvas.
• Firefly Image, with Edit Object for changing one part of an image while keeping the rest untouched, plus Relight and Retouch, which pair prompt-based edits with manual precision.
• Firefly Builder (private beta), turning ideas into interactive prototypes — websites, presentations, apps — via natural language commands.
• Local Model Context Protocol integrations (a standard letting AI agents read and act in external apps), so users can direct third-party agents to make changes in native Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects project files.

For marketers, Adobe GenStudio gains a conversational AI interface for campaign planning, creation and activation, with a coordinator called Coworker managing agents and workflows. Adobe Brand Intelligence, an agent enforcing brand standards, adds Intelligent Reflow — automatic adaptation of designs to new sizes and layouts — also coming to Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

What about Google, Microsoft and Disney?

Adobe is expanding partnerships with Google and Microsoft, and building on collaborations with Anthropic and OpenAI. With Google, Adobe's tools reach more Google products, gain Google's latest frontier AI models, and Photoshop gets new AI-powered editing capabilities explored with Google DeepMind. With Microsoft, Adobe ships optimized versions of Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and Substance 3D Painter (beta) for Arm-based Windows PCs, plus Adobe Express tools inside Microsoft Photos.

The biggest brand play came Monday: a multiyear strategic partnership making Adobe Disney's "official AI innovation partner." Adobe technology will support "concept exploration" in Disney's innovation labs and in parks and cruise development pipelines, using custom AI models and tools.

Adobe now counts more than 1 billion active monthly users worldwide. That's the audience watching whether "your craft, your control or your rights" survives contact with always-on agents that work while you're away.