• Flagship Adobe Creative Cloud applications Illustrator, Photoshop and Stock add new Firefly-powered features and web-based creative workflows

• Breathtaking new generative AI capabilities with Text to Vector Graphic in Illustrator enable rapid, powerful vector illustration and pattern creation

• New AI-powered photo editing features are now available in Lightroom, including Lens Blur and new mobile editing experiences

Today, at Adobe MAX – the world’s largest creativity conference – Adobe announced over 100 major innovations and updates across Creative Cloud that dramatically advance power and precision for creative professionals. Adobe Firefly and AI-powered features are transforming Creative Cloud applications including Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Stock empowering anyone to bring their creative visions to life at the speed of their imagination.

Building on the success of the commercial release of Generative Fill in Photoshop, Adobe is introducing new Firefly-powered workflows in Illustrator with Text to Vector Graphic and in Adobe Express with Generative Fill and Text to Template. Additional innovations across Creative Cloud include new tools in Illustrator, such as Mockup and Retype; AI-powered advancements to Lightroom including Lens Blur as well as a new streamlined editing experience in Lightroom mobile. Adobe also announced the general availability of Photoshop on the web, AI-powered Text-Based Editing in Premiere Pro and Roto Brush in After Effects, plus dozens of other new innovations across Creative Cloud apps.

AI is most powerful when deeply integrated into the core of creative workflows, and these innovations are released alongside new Adobe Firefly Image 2 Model, Adobe Firefly Vector Model and Adobe Firefly Design Model, the most advanced generative AI technologies in the market today, designed to generate content safe for commercial use.

“Bringing Firefly and the power of AI directly into creative workflows has unleashed a new era of creativity across every segment of our business,” said Ashley Still, senior vice president, Digital Media at Adobe. “We’re excited to introduce dozens of new AI-powered capabilities in Creative Cloud to advance web workflows and accelerate creativity with new ways to ideate, express ideas, and save time.”

Breakthrough Innovations across Creative Cloud

Adobe has pioneered numerous AI innovations over the last decade, introducing hundreds of AI-powered features across Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Experience Cloud. Today’s announcements bring significant new value to Creative Cloud members, supercharging every creative workflow with additional power, precision, speed and ease:

Adobe Firefly

• Firefly Image 2 Model is the next generation of generative AI for imaging, significantly advancing Firefly creative control and image quality, and designed to be safe for commercial use.
• Firefly Vector Model is the world’s first generative AI model for vector graphics and expands Firefly into the next media type, powering new Text to Vector Graphic in Illustrator.
• Firefly Design Model, the industry’s first model of its kind, powers instant generation of amazing quality template designs with Text to Template capability that are fully editable in Adobe Express.

Additional new generative AI-powered Text to Image capabilities in the popular Firefly web application where 90% of its users are new to Adobe products. They include Generative Match to apply the style of a reference image to generate new images at scale; Photo Settings, empowering users with new creative controls over image generation; Prompt Guidance for suggestions on improved prompts, inspiring new creations; and Share from Firefly and Save to Libraries to facilitate collaboration and cross-app workflows.

Adobe Illustrator

• All-new Firefly-powered Text to Vector Graphic in Illustrator generates editable, high-quality vector graphics, including a wide array of icons, scenes and patterns quickly and easily from simple text prompts. The new capability is the perfect tool for inspiration, mood boards, marketing and advertising graphic creation and more.
• Additional new innovations include updates to Retype, to turn static text into editable text by quickly identifying similar fonts from Adobe Fonts; Mockup, to quickly transform images and graphics into realistic-looking product and branding mockups; along with updates to Share for Review that make collaborating and exchanging feedback faster than ever.
• All new Illustrator on the web brings to life anything creators at all skill levels can imagine using intuitive and precise design tools that give them complete control over every detail.

Adobe Photoshop

• Firefly-powered Generative Fill in Photoshop, which has seen a 10X adoption rate compared to past releases, continues to inspire creators, as users have generated over 3 billion images with Firefly’s initial model since its beta launch in March, making it the most popular AI image generation model designed for safe commercial use, in record time, globally.
• The general availability of Photoshop on the web with Firefly-powered innovations brings the power and precision of Photoshop to web browsers. Now available to all Photoshop subscribers as part of their subscription, Photoshop on the web is also available on Google Chromebook Plus devices.

Adobe Lightroom

• New AI-powered innovations make workflows more seamless and editing more intuitive for everyone, on any device, including Lens Blur that makes it easier than ever to add an aesthetic blur effect to any part of a photograph without requiring an expensive camera lens.
• The all-new mobile-optimized editing experience streamlines the Lightroom mobile toolbar to prioritize the popular features while making it faster and more intuitive to edit photos on your phone.
• Additional new innovations across the Lightroom ecosystem include HDR Optimization, enabling anyone capturing photos to edit and export their photos with brighter highlights, deeper shadows and more vivid colors, as seen in real life; Point Color helping photographers make precise, accurate and detailed color refinements; along with empowering users with Content Credentials support for new file types to continue Adobe’s commitment to transparency across digital content.

Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects and Frame.io

• Premiere Pro users can now publish videos directly to Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. Premiere Pro includes new templates to quickly set up projects for publishing in the most popular sizes and layouts for social media, allowing users to create, edit and publish videos directly to social media platforms. Create posts, add captions, hashtags and keywords, and then upload them directly from Premiere Pro without compromising quality or ranking.
• AI-powered Text-Based Editing improvements in Premiere Pro and Roto brush in After Effects are now generally available, putting more creative power in the hands of users to experiment, ideate and create in new ways.
• The debut of Share for Review with Frame.io in Adobe’s digital video and audio tools where Premiere Pro’s “Share” button will now intuitively introduce Premiere users to Frame.io with the click of a button for faster content sharing and collaboration.
• Additional innovations include a massive 5x timeline performance advancement in Premiere Pro for faster and smoother editing, new color preferences and improved tone mapping to make it easier to get great color in addition to dozens of other requests from the creative community.

Adobe Stock

• New Firefly-powered workflows streamline the image editing process to create beautiful images in a few clicks including Text to Image to transform concepts into captivating visuals with simple text prompts and Expand Image to extend image backgrounds and aspect ratios in a few clicks.
• Adobe Stock builds on its vast marketplace with Video templates, a rich new video template collection that brings together Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects and Motion Graphics templates. Over 355 million high-quality, royalty-free assets are now available in the Stock collection, including videos, music tracks, photos, illustrations, vectors, video and graphics templates as well as 3D assets.

One in four IT executives believe their organization is moving too fast when it comes to deploying Gen AI technology

Foundry, the media, data, and martech division of IDG, Inc., today released its inaugural 2023 AI Priorities Study. The study comes at a time when ChatGPT and a host of other Generative AI (Gen AI) tools are becoming widely accessible, even as organizations grapple with the technology’s reach, power and capabilities. Foundry surveyed global IT decision-makers (ITDMs) to understand AI and Gen AI use cases, investment and implementation levels, and the challenges these technologies pose for organizations.

One standout discovery was how widespread Gen AI adoption already is among organizations. Almost half of ITDMs reported implementing (20%) or piloting (25%) Gen AI technology to some extent in their organization, and an additional 47% are actively researching the technology. Yet despite this rapid rate of adoption, nearly one-quarter of ITDMs expressed concerns that their organization is moving too fast with respect to the use of Gen AI. 

“Generative AI is poised to unleash the next wave of productivity within organizations, and IT leaders are extensively researching and piloting these technologies to understand their full potential and mitigate the risks,” said Stacey Raap, Marketing & Research Manager, Foundry. “We undertook this AI Priorities study to understand the marketplace dynamics and align priorities surrounding AI, namely the driving objectives among organizations, the specific implementation concerns, and how vendors can build products and educational tools that address both, and hone in on the specifics around Gen AI.”

Integration Speed Bumps

Due to AI and machine learning’s ability to constantly monitor and analyze large amounts of data, and automate mundane activities, it is no surprise that ITDMs reported their current top use cases for AI applications to be data analysis, employee productivity, and process automation. However, only 34% say that their organization currently has the right data and technology in place to enable effective AI.

AI technologies also present challenges and ethical implications that ITDMs must address when implementing it into their IT systems and processes, including data privacy (prioritizing data privacy and ensure that AI systems handle and process data compliantly), security and robustness (strength and ability to protect AI models and data from unauthorized access), and transparency and explainability (ability to understand how decisions are made and access to explanations). 

Specific to Gen AI, top factors impacting the integration with existing systems include data integration (45%), security and privacy (45%), and user experience (34%). Alarmingly, only 36% of ITDMs reported that their organization has a policy in place and/or system in place to monitor the use of Gen AI.

Preparing for the AI-Driven Workplace

Despite these apprehensions, the vast majority of organizations and IT leaders are preparing for a workplace that embraces Gen AI. ITDMs are actively identifying use cases (57%), initiating pilot programs (45%), training/upskilling employees on Gen AI (41%), and establishing policies and guidelines (40%). 

Regarding the addition of Gen AI capabilities into existing vendors’ product areas, 38% affirmed their vendors have added Gen AI into productivity/collaboration tools, 26% marketing/sales, 25% CRM, and 25% security tools. The majority of ITDMs also say that these additions have resulted in some/strong positive impact, and they believe productivity, marketing/sales, and security would benefit from additional Gen AI capabilities.

Investing in the AI Future

Recognizing AI’s vast potential to enhance company operations and fuel growth, the majority of IT decision-makers remain enthusiastic about investing in these technologies. Three quarters are either actively researching or piloting AI initiatives, and when it comes to Gen AI specifically, a mere 8% expressed no interest (11% SMB vs. 5% enterprise). Currently, 36% of all ITDMs and 45% of enterprise IT leaders have dedicated budgets for AI projects, with 61% anticipating an increase in AI spending in 2024.

The top five business objectives driving AI investments include improving employee productivity, enabling innovation, gaining a competitive edge, improving customer support or services, and developing new products or services. Reflecting the value of achieving these priorities, 44% of ITDMs agree that their organization is willing to pay more for AI-infused products from vendors. 

As ITDMs work to enhance their understanding of how to integrate AI technologies for the greatest business benefits, technology vendors must keep customers informed on effective tool utilization and share their product roadmap. This will allow organizations to plan strategically for the integration of AI products and services into their organizations.

All-Inclusive TV advertising agency Marketing Architects introduces Annika Streaming, the first opportunistic rate performance marketplace for streaming TV advertisers.

Streaming TV advertising is taking a step toward the future. This week, TV advertising agency Marketing Architects launched a new platform for CTV advertisers called Annika Streaming. Based on technology initially developed for linear TV, Annika Streaming buys CTV and streaming inventory more efficiently than current marketplace offerings allow. This enables performance brands to capitalize on streaming’s potential.

Annika’s development began six years ago when Marketing Architects built an AI-powered DSP for linear TV. The platform was designed to evaluate custom audience and performance criteria, set it against market trends and historical data, then calculate which media buys will drive the best ROI for individual brands. The result was a linear TV marketplace that delivered premium inventory for TV advertisers without premium price tags.

But as viewership shifted to streaming and connected TV, it was essential brands follow consumers to the channel. Unfortunately for performance marketers, streaming’s promise of advanced targeting and measurement capabilities has been overshadowed by its high prices, typically 5-10X higher than linear TV.

To close this gap, Marketing Architects spent the last two years building a proprietary streaming capability, bringing the efficient prices Annika achieved in linear into streaming and CTV. Now, Annika Streaming solves some of the biggest challenges for performance marketers on the channel.

• Pricing: Annika Streaming obtains rates significantly more efficient than industry-leading third-party DSPs. These are achieved through a data-driven approach that benefits streaming publishers and advertisers alike.
• Targeting: The platform offers several layers of contextual, geographic, and dayparting targeting capabilities, plus retargeting.
• Distribution: Annika is fully integrated with dozens of streaming publishers and buys inventory available on Roku, Chromecast, Amazon Firestick, and smart TVs.
• Measurement: With Annika, advertisers get access to multiple measurement models running in parallel, including IP address tracking and holdout groups for incrementality testing.

New Integration Service Connecter allows developers access to powerful foundational models

UiPath, a leading enterprise automation software company, today announced a new Integration Service Connector that gives customers access to Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that provides access to industry-leading foundation models (FMs) via an API to build and scale generative AI applications.

Using UiPath’s connector for Amazon Bedrock, automation developers and citizen developers alike can seamlessly integrate Generative AI directly in their UiPath Studio and Studio Web automations, using the model of their preference and within Amazon Web Services (AWS). The connector supports text/chat capabilities through Amazon Titan FMs and several other FMs from leading AI providers via Amazon Bedrock, including the Jurassic-2 family of multilingual large language models (LLMs) from AI21 Labs, which follow natural language instructions to generate text in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Dutch. Customers can also choose Claude, Anthropic’s LLM, which can perform a wide variety of conversational and text processing tasks and is based on Anthropic’s extensive research into training honest and responsible AI systems.

“The UiPath connector for Amazon Bedrock is simple to use and brings the power of foundation models to all UiPath customers so they can accelerate building their own Generative AI applications,” said Graham Sheldon, Chief Product Officer at UiPath. “With its open, flexible, and responsible approach, UiPath provides organizations with a comprehensive platform for implementing and harnessing the power of AI-powered automation. This functionality complements our vision for helping customers innovate faster with Generative AI.”

Generative AI is powered by FMs—very large models that are pre-trained on vast amounts of data. According to AWS, “FMs can perform so many more tasks because they contain such a large number of parameters that make them capable of learning complex concepts. And through their pre-training exposure to internet-scale data in all its various forms and myriad of patterns, FMs learn to apply their knowledge within a wide range of contexts.”

In addition, since all data is encrypted and does not leave a customer’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), customers can trust that their data will remain private and confidential.

Earlier this year, UiPath also announced that data science teams using Amazon SageMaker, an end-to-end machine learning (ML) service, can now quickly and seamlessly connect Amazon SageMaker-hosted ML models into UiPath business processes without the need for complex coding and manual effort. By connecting Amazon SageMaker to UiPath, users can interact with deployed models via the connector and use their outputs in their workflows.

Usercentrics, a global leader in the field of Consent Management Platforms (CMP), has once again been awarded multiple badges by G2, the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplace.

For Fall 2023, Usercentrics has been awarded an overall Leader Badge for Consent Management Platforms, as well as the European Leader Badge in this category.

These Badges are particularly meaningful to the team as they represent the experiences of real business professionals and software buyers around the world who are implementing Usercentrics’ solutions.

“Rankings on G2 reports are based on data provided to us by real software buyers,” said Sara Rossio, Chief Product Officer at G2. “Potential buyers know they can trust these insights when researching and selecting software because they’re rooted in vetted, verified, and authentic reviews.”

Usercentrics is well established as the leading European provider of consent management solutions. It is also gratifying to also receive an overall Leader badge in recognition of the company’s substantial global growth. Usercentrics is committed to empowering organizations to embrace data privacy while building trust with their users through freedom of choice. This will continue to be accomplished via innovation and strategic partnerships.

In September 2022, Google launched a new CMP Partner Program for their Consent Mode solution, which featured the Usercentrics and Cookiebot Consent Management Platforms (CMPs). Then in June 2023, Usercentrics also announced that it was one of the first CMP providers certified by Google to meet Google’s new requirements for publishers.

Usercentrics CEO Donna Dror noted, “We are thrilled to receive this recognition of our hard work to delight our customers and help them achieve and maintain seamless, reliable compliance with data privacy regulations around the world. We are committed to relentless innovation in our Consent Management Platform (CMP), adapting to new data protection regulations such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), industry standards like TCF 2.2 and other emerging legislations, to ensure that our solutions continue to lead the privacy ecosystem.”

Partnership enhances Wizeline’s offerings with new generative AI-powered experiences from Google

Wizeline, an AI-native digital services provider specializing in modern, scalable products and platforms, announced the development of new generative AI services as part of its Intelligence Everywhere offering in partnership with Google Cloud. This partnership complements Wizeline's generative AI strategy with new solutions and experiences built on Google Cloud technologies, helping clients accelerate the adoption of AI-native capabilities.

“As part of our mission to empower customers with transformative AI solutions, Wizeline is taking our partnership with Google Cloud to the next level, focusing on creating innovative solutions using generative AI to grow market share and optimize business operations,” said Aníbal Abarca, Chief AI and Technology Officer, Wizeline. “We have launched a massive transformation initiative to train 100% of our team on AI technologies, expecting that by the end of the year, more than 80% of our technologists will be leveraging generative AI to augment software development and business processes for our clients across industries.”

The partnership with Google Cloud expands Wizeline’s consulting and technology delivery offerings to help clients materialize the value proposition of generative AI in their businesses, using its AI-Native Framework to accelerate adoption of next generation capabilities. Wizeline’s AI-Native Strategy Workshop guides customers through the development of a short-term action plan, from defining business goals to outlining a concrete action plan, and positions them for a seamless transition into the development phase with Wizeline’s team of certified engineers.

“Google Cloud’s generative AI capabilities can add real world value for organizations of all types and sizes,” said David Ruiz, Data and AI Lead for Google Cloud México. “New services and solutions from partners like Wizeline will scale these capabilities to customers more quickly and effectively, and create even more opportunities for organizations to accelerate their AI-driven transformations.”

Wizeline plans to continue investing in the development of its Google Cloud partnership over the next year, certifying an additional 100 engineers on Google Cloud technologies through Wizeline Academy to qualify their teams across specializations and expertise in the Google Partner Program.

Eka Software Solutions, a leading provider of cloud-based trading and risk management solutions for businesses, is honored to win the Commodities Technology House of the Year awarded by Energy Risk Asia Awards for the year 2023. Eka won this category for its technological innovation in the raw materials sector.

Commodities Technology House of the Year award highlights Eka's commitment to helping businesses unlock their true potential in the energy markets and harness the power of an energy trading and management platform Cloud-based Risk Management (ETRM or Energy Trading and Risk Management). Eka's mission is to put customer success and satisfaction at the forefront of all activities. Eka's cloud-based ETRM platform helps businesses gain real-time visibility, make data-driven decisions, and proactively manage risks.

“At Eka, we strive to provide our clients with cutting-edge trading and risk management solutions. Our significant investments in R&D have led to the development of a modern, cloud-based platform that offers customizable solutions to complex commodities and energy trading businesses. This award is an honor that justifies our efforts and our investment. We will continue to focus on improving the customer experience. » - Brian Quinn, Senior Vice President, Global Revenue

The Energy Risk Asia Awards recognize excellence in Asian commodity markets and provide a unique opportunity for companies in the industry to achieve valuable recognition.

Pudu Robotics, a global leader in the development, production, and sales of commercial service robots and China's No.1 ranking commercial service robot exporter, has shipped a cumulative number of nearly 70,000 units as of August 2023, according to the "China Service Robot Industry Research" (the "Report") published in October by EO Intelligence of EqualOcean. The global sales of Pudu Robotics mainly come from Japan, South Korea, the U.S., Germany, and etc. Covering more than 600 cities in 60 countries and regions, the brand has become one of the largest service robot manufacturers in the world.

EO Intelligence is the professional industry research and consulting service platform under EqualOcean with focuses on forward-looking technology research fields such as AI, big data, and mobile internet. The Report offers insight into the development trends of service robot industry, a sector that's on the rise with unlimited growth potential – the complementary capabilities of service robots and managing staff can effectively help companies optimize costs, while China's commercial service robot providers are laying out diverse scenarios with advantages in both technology and pricing.

The report points out that in the exploration of overseas markets, Chinese service robot manufacturers have begun to form different patterns from the perspective of global shipment volume. Manufacturers with a global shipment volume of less than 40,000 units are mostly in the startup stage. The companies are just beginning to take shape and are still unable to penetrate the entire industry chain.  For manufacturers with a global shipment volume of 40,000 to 60,000 units, they are in the stage of rapid development. The company's supply chain system is beginning to take effect, and they have a rich product matrix, and the global market is also expanding rapidly. Manufacturers with a global shipment volume of more than 60,000 units are in the stage of leading the market. The companies possess industry-leading technology and have a complete system of research and development, production, sales, and services.

Leading the global industry with integrated advantages of R&D and customized solutions

Pudu Robotics has two main product lines of delivery robots and cleaning robots as the solid foundation, boasting a diverse portfolio that meets various needs. Its delivery robot BellaBot and cleaning robot PUDU CC1 have won recognition from global customers for excellent performance and user-friendly designs.

Successful products are built on technology and innovation. Pudu Robotics has invested heavily in R&D and independently developed four core components and tackled the full algorithm development for mobile robots, including PUDU OS, PUDU Open Platform, PUDU VSLAM+ and more.

Pudu Robotics offers comprehensive solutions to meet the needs of customers from different industries, it not only provides highly efficient service robot products, but also supports software and services that enable customers to achieve automated, intelligent operations. Its solutions are widely used in the industries of food and beverage, hospitality, healthcare, logistics and more.

"Going global is also about going local, we're not selling the standard products in the international market, but products, brand, and services that are closely related and inseparable from the local markets, accelerating service robot export has always been one of Pudu Robotics' key strategies, and by deeply cultivating the two main product lines of delivery and cleaning, we aim to fully satisfy the diversified needs of the market," said Felix Zhang, founder and CEO of Pudu Robotics.

The market size of commercial service robots has grown robustly in the past few years as a solution to the pain points of service industry. Looking ahead, Pudu Robotics will focus on customized services and scenario-based solutions to transform the business models, driven by technological innovation that continually adapts and expands application scope of service robots.