• Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s family of creative generative AI models, is now commercially available

• Users can now choose to access Firefly through a standalone web application, Adobe Express and Adobe Creative Cloud applications like Photoshop and Illustrator

• Firefly for Enterprise offerings include brand-specific Firefly models, Express for Enterprise and Adobe GenStudio

Today, Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) announced the launch of the new Firefly web application, a playground for exploring AI-assisted creative expression. After a successful six-month beta, Firefly-powered capabilities are now deeply integrated into creative workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Express and Adobe Experience Cloud and available for commercial use

Firefly’s foundational generative AI models for images, text effects and vectors support text prompts in over 100 languages and enable users around the world to create stunning content that is designed to be safe for commercial use.

Adobe Firefly-powered features are now available in several Creative Cloud apps, including Generative Fill and Generative Expand in Photoshop, Generative Recolor in Illustrator and Text to Image and Text Effects in Adobe Express. These native integrations deliver more creative power than ever before to customers, empowering them to experiment, ideate and create in completely new ways. Adobe will continuously bring Firefly-powered features into more Creative Cloud apps and workflows for photography, imaging, illustration, design, video, 3D and beyond.

“With over two billion generations, creators amazed us with their engagement and feedback to the Firefly beta, inspiring us to deliver generative AI capabilities that are designed to be commercially safe and seamlessly integrated into the interfaces customers love,” said Ely Greenfield, chief technology officer, Digital Media at Adobe.

The general availability of Firefly for Enterprise brings groundbreaking generative AI capabilities to Adobe GenStudio and Express for Enterprise. In addition, Adobe is working with Enterprise customers to enable them to customize models using their own assets and brand-specific content. Customers will also get access to Firefly APIs, embedding the power of Firefly into their own ecosystems and automation workflows. Firefly for Enterprise offers businesses the opportunity to obtain an intellectual property (IP) indemnification for content generated by most Firefly-powered workflows.

Top global brands including Accenture, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Mattel, NASCAR, NVIDIA, ServiceNow and Omnicom are already working with Adobe to explore how Firefly can help drive efficiencies, reduce costs and accelerate their content supply chains.

Introducing Generative Credits

Adobe is introducing a new credit-based model for generative AI across Creative Cloud offerings with the goal of enabling adoption of new generative image workflows powered by the Firefly Image model. Starting today, the Firefly web application, Express Premium and Creative Cloud paid plans now include an allocation of “fast” Generative Credits. Generative Credits are tokens that enable customers to turn a text-based prompt into image and vector creations in Photoshop, Illustrator, Express and the Firefly web application.

After the plan-specific number of “fast” Generative Credits is consumed, subscribers can continue to generate content at slower speeds, or buy additional “fast” Generative Credits through a Firefly paid subscription plan. Starting November 2023, Adobe plans for users to be able to purchase additional “fast” Generative Credits through a subscription pack.

Trust and Transparency in Content Generated With AI

Firefly will be made up of multiple models, tailored to serve customers with a wide array of skillsets and technical backgrounds, working across a variety of different use cases. Adobe’s first model, focused on images and text effects, was trained on Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content and public domain content where copyright has expired and is designed to generate content safe for commercial use.

Future Adobe Firefly models will leverage a variety of assets, technology and training data from Adobe and others. As other models are implemented, Adobe will continue to prioritize countering potential harmful bias.

By default, Firefly includes Content Credentials on every asset created using Firefly to indicate that generative AI was used, bringing more trust and transparency to digital content. Content Credentials are verifiable details that serve as a digital “nutrition label.” They can show information including an asset’s name, creation date, tools used for creation and any edits made. Powered by free, open-source technology from the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), this data remains associated with content wherever it is used, published or stored, enabling proper attribution and helping consumers make informed decisions about digital content.

New tool ensures consistent reporting and boosts productivity for program administrators, reducing administrative burden and duplication of effort.

Acuity Insights announces that its One45 product now offers a Canvas Alignment Tool, which streamlines the flow of data with Canvas – one of the most widely-used learning management systems (LMS) in higher education. This new tool allows programs to ensure that their curriculum mapping and facilitator reporting are consistent and accurate between the two systems. As a result, it reduces administrative burden, duplication of effort and reporting inconsistencies, ensuring program reporting meets accreditation standards with ease.

This new tool will improve functionality and productivity for health professions programs that use both One45 and Canvas.

"The Canvas Alignment Tool is an exciting addition to our groundbreaking One45 product. This tool combines complex data from diverse systems, delivering an efficient and effective solution for program administrators," says Rich Emrich, CEO of Acuity Insights. "This is yet another step in our strategy to enable program administrators to harness the power of data easily and effortlessly. We offer seamless integrations with leading education technology platforms in higher education. By doing so, administrators can gain valuable insights, ensuring both program and student success, without the hassle of making sense of data from various disconnected systems."

What is One45?

One45 by Acuity Insights is a comprehensive program management solution that allows health professions programs to simplify complex workflows, streamline accreditation, and enhance program assessment.

Streamlined solutions for health professions programs
One45 empowers programs with a dynamic, all-in-one platform that powers scheduling, curriculum management, assessment and evaluation, and MSPE processes with unparalleled flexibility.

Simplified reporting tasks
One45 solves tedious reporting challenges. It fully supports accreditation requirements in assessment, curriculum, clinical experiences, and Student Affairs, while effortlessly meeting day-to-day reporting needs.

Seamless collaboration
The One45 program management solution facilitates easy information sharing, collaboration, and communication among departments and learners alike.

New Suite of Features Reduces Seasonal Subscriber Churn and Addresses Complicated Geofencing Requirements

Evergent, the customer management and monetization leader for streaming and D2C sports businesses, today announced the launch of its new Sports Accelerator package, a suite of features designed to optimize monetization of live event programming for sports OTT providers. Evergent’s Sports Accelerator addresses the most challenging aspects of subscription management and monetization for sports programming, including reducing churn between professional sports seasons, navigating couch rights and blackout restrictions, and supporting channel sales and global payment processing. The new package builds on Evergent’s existing relationships and experience with sports media leaders including the National Basketball Association (NBA), YES Network, Bally Sports, MSG Network, and Marquee Sports.

Live sports programming is consistently one of the most popular television genres in the United States and throughout the world and it has only become more popular of late, as viewers are left with fewer original content choices due to the ongoing actors and writers strikes. Over the past year, streaming providers have also invested heavily in live sports programming, with major U.S. sports leagues including the NHL, MLB, and MLS broadcasting some games exclusively on platforms including Apple TV+, YouTube TV, and Amazon Prime.

The new Sports Accelerator package from Evergent is purpose-built to address the seasonal, location-specific nature of live sports programming. Evergent’s seasonal subscription feature allows customers to retain subscribers across season boundaries while aligning those subscriptions to season validity dates. Additional benefits of the feature include price grandfathering across seasons to help reduce churn that would otherwise take place after a major event like the Super Bowl or NBA Finals.

In addition to seasonal subscription management, Evergent’s Sports Accelerator package also includes the following features designed to improve monetization and subscriber retention:

• Couch Rights: Evergent’s couch rights feature allows RSNs to seamlessly remain compliant with complicated geofencing rules and blackout restrictions. Evergent allows RSNs to establish and enforce couch rights for subscribers traveling beyond the RSN’s broadcasting boundaries, allowing subscribers to enjoy their subscription content while away from home.
• Subscription Pause and Resume: Evergent’s flexible subscription management tools allow end users to pause their subscription for any reason, minimizing the number of subscribers who churn without returning to the platform. This customer-friendly feature allows streaming companies to avoid the high costs of customer reacquisition.
• Channel Sales Manager: With Evergent, media providers can sell tickets and subscriptions through a variety of channels, including the teams themselves. Media companies can create and issue coupons or vouchers through the Evergent platform, allowing them to enable, manage and track coupon use across channels in a single platform.
• Favorite Teams/Players: This feature allows media companies to capture information on the subscriber’s favorite teams or players during the sign-up process, providing valuable data for personalized experiences and upselling opportunities.

Sports media customers use these tools for customer relationship management and monetization to overcome the challenges specific to their industry. Customers such as the NBA to deploy the seasonal subscription feature to increase customer retention. Regional sports networks (RSNs) including Bally Sports use Evergent’s couch rights feature to maintain compliance with geofencing and blackout restrictions.

“The live sports media landscape is changing, and it’s clear that media companies can no longer rely on the same playbook,” said Vijay Sajja, founder and CEO of Evergent. “Our new Sports Accelerator package was built with the fan in mind, simultaneously improving the user experience and reducing customer churn. We will continue to hone these features as we learn from our partnerships with some of the leading entities in sports media.”

Kaltura set to power Reshet 13’s strategic digital evolution with Full Cloud TV solutions across all devices.

Kaltura, the Video Experience Cloud, announced today, that as part of their expanded partnership with Israeli commercial broadcaster Reshet 13, they have powered Reshet’s full Cloud TV service, launched in just three months.

The second biggest channel in Israel, Reshet reaches over a third of Israeli households every day, more than 1 million viewers per day, and more than 3.5 million unique visitors on their digital platforms per month.

As part of Reshet 13’s digital video strategy, Kaltura is powering multiple frontend devices, including Smart-TVs, Android-TV, AppleTV and others, as well as SVOD and AVOD solutions, an advanced media-oriented mini-EPG, and more. Additional capabilities, including Quality of Experience analytics, data insights, personalization, AI capabilities and more are expected to be added in the coming months, along with availability for more devices. The solution is based on Kaltura’s Streaming Platform.

Reshet 13’s new Cloud TV solution is a key part of the company’s TV digital evolution, in which Kaltura has been a partner since late 2020 when it was selected to power Reshet 13’s D2C streaming service. Operating on an ambitious timeline, Kaltura migrated over 170,000 content assets to Reshet 13’s new platform and had the new service fully operational in under six weeks.

“Our history and track record of excellence with Reshet 13 made us the ideal partner for their continued digital transformation; we are honored to add more value to Reshet and their customers with this expansion”, said Shuki Eytan, General Manager Media & Telecom at Kaltura. “We are excited to continue this journey, bringing these new capabilities to their viewers, and to further execute Reshet 13’s short and long-term digital transformation strategy.”

“Selecting Kaltura as our partner was a great choice,” said Tom Dan, Reshet’s Chief Digital and Strategy Officer. “Since launching the Smart TV app together with Kaltura we’ve reached record viewership with over 200K devices and an average viewing time of more than 20 hours per month on an amazing app in terms of performance and capabilities.”

Nucleus Research published an ROI guidebook examining the benefits of deploying the Databricks Lakehouse Platform. Nucleus interviewed multiple Databricks Lakehouse customers and found the solution delivered an average ROI of 482 percent over a three-year period, with an average annual benefit of $30.5M and a payback period of 4.1 months.

“The mass adoption of data and AI have changed the way enterprises consume cloud computing, and legacy infrastructures are failing to keep pace with scaling data volumes. As enterprises modernize their analytics infrastructure, they also seek to consolidate systems to reduce complexity and streamline administrative efforts,” said Senior Analyst Alexander Wurm. “As a result, solutions like the Databricks Lakehouse Platform have risen to prominence for their ability to replace various legacy systems, including data warehouses, data lakes, and other specialized systems, while supporting diverse data applications, including SQL analytics, AI modeling, data transformations, governance, and more.”

Key benefits highlighted in the guidebook include:

• User productivity improvements. With Databricks, organizations noted 49 percent improved data team productivity including time savings of 52 percent for data scientists, 51 percent for data engineers, and 45 percent for data analysts.
• Process improvements. Organizations deploying Databricks saw 48 percent data ingestion improvements, 33 percent ETL efficiency gains, 28 percent improved BI efficiency, and 60 percent more efficient MLOps.
• Infrastructure cost savings. Overall, customers of the Databricks Lakehouse Platform realized a $2.6M average annual infrastructure cost savings. An equipment manufacturer noted 30 percent processing cost savings by migrating to Databricks while another sports franchise experienced 4x compute efficiency relative to Snowflake. The organization’s data storage was also more efficient with Databricks’ medallion architecture, generating $96,000 in annual savings.
• Reduced process latency. Databricks customers saw an average processing latency improvement of 48 percent. One biotechnology company saw 75 percent reduced processing latency with individual ownership of projects and timelines. This organization also saw a 36-hour reduction in processing latency for weekend loads, allowing analysts and sales professionals to work on relevant data faster.
• Administrative cost savings. Organizations deploying the Databricks Lakehouse Platform experienced $1.1M average administrative cost savings. One organization noted $710,000 in annual administrative cost savings, including 50 percent less time spent on platform management. An equipment manufacturer saw $3.4M in annual savings and an organization in the e-commerce industry saved $480,000 in annual administrative costs with 20 percent administrative time savings.
• Accelerated time to production for data and AI projects. By using the Databricks Lakehouse Platform for large-scale data processing and model training and deployment, Nucleus found that organizations significantly shortened the time to production for their data and AI projects by 52 percent. A biotechnology company saw 2x faster time to production for its data and AI projects. Another organization in the e-commerce industry noted 1.8x faster time-to-live for AI use cases, including 60 percent reduced time-to-live for the organization’s NLP interface.