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This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Want to get to our next story? This was interesting, you know, we have written about this at Bloomberg. When Adobe released its Firefly image generating software last year, the company said that AI model was trained mainly on Adobe Stock, its database of hundreds of millions of licensed images. Firefly, Adobe said, was a commercially safe alternative to competitors such as mad Journey, which learned by scraping pictures from across the Internet.
Behind the scenes, Adobe also was relying in part on AI generated content to train Firefly, including from those same AI rivals. In numerous presentations and public posts about how Firefly is safer than the competition due to its training data, Adobe never made clear that its model actually used images from some of these same competitors. This latest reporting from our own Rachel Metz and Brodie for just last week about how Adobe promotes its tool as say, from content
scraped from the Internet. We've got with us Ashley Still, Senior vice president and general manager of Creative Business at Adobe. She's back with us, she joins us from Menlo Park, California.
Ashley, good to have you with us. How are you.
I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, thanks so much for coming back with us. I do want to start here. Given our colleagues recent reporting, we should know Adobe did say that a relatively small amount, about five percent of the images used to train its AI tool was generated by other AI platforms. Can you add anything here given what you work on at the company.
Yeah, absolutely, so, you know, we continue to you know, we stand by and have stood by Firefly as commercially
safe as you mentioned since we launched. And what this means is we are incredibly confident and have you know, some very significant measures in place to make sure that the content generated by Firefly doesn't infringe on copyright, I P trademarks, you know, you name it, and and you know, as as as an example of how we stand by that, we actually offer indemnification for the content that is that is generated by Firefly to businesses.
So in terms of ghead, Tim Well, I was just going to say, so, if why wasn't the company or hasn't the company been clear about the fact, at least from the beginning that Firefly was trained on some generative AI from the same same kind of companies that Adobe has publicly tried to distance itself from.
Yeah, you know, I I think we uh it. We have always been clear that there is some AI generated content that's used in training and uh and you know, in fact, I think as as editing that that is AI system becomes more, it's going to be harder and harder to say that there's any image doesn't have some AI generated aspects of that image, right. And I think in the past, I've we've talked about some of the capabilities that we've released in Photoshop, So we've always been
clear about that. You know, we actually don't necessarily have a lot of information about the source of the AI that's generated, and that's why we focus so much on making sure that again the content, that anything that's submitted to Adobe stock doesn't have any owned aspects of that of anything in that image, right Again, no copyright, trademark, identifiable characteristics as part of that image. So we've been
pretty consistent about that. I think what's happened recently is some very specific questions about, well, could there be images generated from specific sources, And of course there could be there could be I am curious.
Are we are curious? You know, if you've got any calls from customers maybe about the possible confusion here about you know, are we really one hundred percent commercially safe or is it more like ninety five percent commercially safe.
Yeah, what our customers want to know is are we indemnifying them?
Right?
And the answer is one hundred percent yes. Right, nothing's changed, and nothing's changed about our confidence in that Firefly will not produce content that infringes on other people's owned marks, content, et cetera. Right, And we do that again by being really careful about the content that we train on. As I mentioned, everything goes to regardless of the source, whether it's generated by a camera or sketch with a human hand.
Or.
Assisted or created through artificial intelligence. Every piece of content goes through a moderation process through our Adobe stock marketplace before it ever is used to train anything. And so we really do that regardless of the source of the content, and that's a huge part of it. The other aspect is the types of things and prompts that we actually
allow you to create. And so again nothing's changed in terms of the process and the technology that we have in place to give us this confidence around commercial safety.
I do wonder too, does it give you at Ashley by really training mainly on Adobe stock, which I can imagine is massive and growing every day or every second. Having said that, right, we know that generative AI is going to be made better by more more information that
has put into it, more and more data. So do you limit kind of set to some in some regard the upside of the potential of all of this by keeping it I understand, by keeping it commercially safe very important for clients, But is there some limitations as a result of that in terms of I don't know creativity or ability because that's opening it to everything.
Well, that's a great question and actually very relevant to another piece of news that we announced today. So we actually announced two things today. First, we are showcasing video AI workflows that will be bringing into Premiere Pro later
this year, which is incredibly exciting. And then we also kind of snuck or showed some early explorations around things that we're exploring with third parties around bringing third party models into our applications, and in this case it is specifically partners in the video space or potential partners with in the video space with Open Ai, Sora with Runway,
and in a smaller company called Peka. And to your point, models are going to be good at different things, right, and whether it's the training approach or whether it is you know, just the decisions made about what the model
is for and the use case that it's solving. In the case of Firefly, one of the things that we've really prioritized is creative control and controllability because we deeply integrate Firefly into our creative applications like Photoshop, and in the case of video, certainly Premiere Pro because our customers want to edit content with AI. They want to take their original images, you know, in video and produce the content that there that they want to produce faster and
with more creative expression than ever before. But in some cases there might be use cases that models are good are great at.
Actually that isn't a.
Focose for us.
I want to jump in because we only have thirty seconds left and I'm so curious about this. How do you prevent deep fakes and stuff from this generative AI video?
Sure, so that is going to be a huge area focused and content credentials is absolutely critical. You can think of that as a nutrition label for content. There's an
open standard that Adobe started with many partners. I think there's over two thousand companies that are now part of this part of this open standard, and we think that it's incredibly important for any editing tool or generative tool to just be to put metadata in the content and then enable consumers to quickly and easily see how the content that they're consuming every day was created.
Always great to check in with you and find out what you guys are up to with all of this. Ashley still over at Adobe.
We always like to remind everyone that our next guest is the inventor of the segue. You know it, of course, the human transporter that balances itself. And he also holds Carol a variety of past variety, variety.
We've all lost count so many.
I don't want to say what millions, but there's a lot.
Yeah.
His focus now expanding the reach of First Robotics competitions and the minds of young people.
Yeah.
I've been lucky to go to one of the events, the competitions many years ago in Saint Louis. It's so cool. Dean came In is the founder of First Witch stands for for inspiration and recognition of science and technology. He joins us from Manchester, New Hampshire. Dean, so great to have you back with us. Actually, Wes, we were preparing for this segment. One of our producers are you to
producer Elizabeth Sedron. She actually was competing in the first robotics competition in St. Louis, which I was covering for Bloomberg TV at the time.
Back at World's Crossing.
You didn't even know it, but she talked about what a great experience it was to be part of it. So great to have you back with us, And yeah, it feels like all of our worlds are colliding right here. How are you and tell us about the latest round of first and what you guys are up to.
So things are great here. In my day job, I have about one thousand engineers. We're working out all sorts of NEAT projects. We just got the FDA approval on of really small, wearable high performance insulin pump.
For people with diabetes.
We are working on all sorts of other projects at Army, our Advanced Regenerate Manufacturing Institute which has now got two hundred members, and we're manufacturing cells tissues in oregons, hopefully some of which will be through the FDA relatively soon. In FDA provinces, we're doing all sorts of neat stuff, but every one of our projects and every member of ARM is suffering from the same issue talent, talent and talent.
And the good news is it's now become common knowledge to our government leaders, our industry leaders, our education leaders that the most critical shortage of this country has is
really passionate, talented stem folks. And as you know, thirty five years ago and I started first, I was telling people that until we can make science, technology, engineering and mathematics as exciting to kids, as accessible to kids, as rewarding to kids as football and basketball and the world of entertainment, this country will continue to celebrate those things, sports and entertainment and create the world's best people in sports and entertainment.
But that's not going to keep this country going.
We need to get kids, particularly women and minorities that culturally have been literally pushed away from thinking about careers and science and technology. So as you know that the power to me of sports to engage kids and get them passionate seemed to be all we got to do create create a science engineering competition that could compete for.
The hearts and minds of these kids. And we went from twenty three teams thirty five years ago.
This year we have over eighty thousand schools worldwide.
We have one hundred countries involved.
The championship, which starts on Wednesday and goes to Saturday, will this year be in Houston, no longer in Saint Louis, but we'll have over fifty thousand people from representing all the teams from around the country and around the world competing there. Over a thousand teams will be there.
You should be there. It's going to be fantastic.
And here we are showing for those who are watching on YouTube and Blueberg Originals some of the past competitions, and if you are not familiar and you have kids, you should just google it and check it out because it really is about kids building and making things, competing and love it.
It's really really cool. Dean, I'm wondering, obviously First has grown so much in the last thirty five years, but I'm wondering if how this is viewed by local governments, how it's viewed by school boards, how STEM is viewed in the classroom as part of a child's education here in the US. I'm wondering if that's gotten any better over the last thirty five years.
Well, i'd like to.
I'd say First is taking credit for making it a lot better. Our Governor Chris Sinunu announced earlier this year that we're going to put a first kit and a first robotics program not in every school in the state, but in every classroom in the state because our newer little robotics kids don't cost a whole lot more than a single textbook.
That's cool.
And by the way, last Thursday evening, we had a huge event in Washington, DC, and our Secretary of Commerce, Gina Romando, was there pointing out that it is so critical to get STEM up in the hearts and minds of kids around the country.
And as you know, the Chip act is going to.
Put out more than fifty billion dollars, but it's not going to help, as she pointed out, unless we have the people with the skill sets to fill these factories to make these chips, to write the code.
To do the AI, to use the AI.
So the answer to your question is, I think STEM is finally and I'd like to think first has something to do with it really becoming front and center to serious people that are looking to the long term future of this country's needs. And we've got to get back to getting all kids from all backgrounds more excited about STEM. And as I said, we have a sport that's as
exciting as every other sport. But the only difference between first and every other sport is an our sport, every kid on every team can turn pro.
And that's why your business.
Community or to be demanding that they have first teams in every school.
I think it's really interesting. You know, there's a couple of things I would agree with that, and it's like we talk a lot about just financial know how, in other words, you know, planning for your retirement savings. I agree. It's another thing that kids should be taught pretty early. Having said that you talked about AI and that you your thinking is, listen, we're going to need more engineers
more than ever before because of it. Go there a little bit more deeply, because I do wonder about your perspective. Someone who makes things, has made lots of things, and thinks about technology and the things that are innovating or disrupting kind of how we do things. When you look at AI, generative AI, machine learning, what will be mandatory because you know some of the discussions that are going on Dean right now is that it's going to replace
a lot of technical jobs. How do you see it someone who's been in this world making and understanding technology and a level that many don't.
Well, I'm no historian, but I think pessimists that are always afraid of innovation, always afraid of change, always look at the worst possible outcomes. I am sure that hundreds of years ago, when the first steam engines came along, people predicted that there'd be no more work for labor for backbreaking ditch diggers, because a steam engine could do
the work of ten thousand of them. But what they didn't realize is, once you've got bulldozers, you're not going to build tiny holes with a small number of people. You're going to build super highways that cross continents. Once we develop a new technology, yes, it'll replace some people that were doing some of it in the past. But if the new technology is more empowering and more efficient, all that it does is open up huge expanses in
new human growth and opportunity. And so I can't think of a single new technology that, while it always displaces, let's say, some piece of the current world, it always expands more and better opportunities. And I can't imagine that the people that might be displaced from doing boring, repetitive jobs that can have robotic systems take their place, not just physically, but even in terms of the technology that
is behind. AI will give engineers more powerful tools that will give more people more capability to focus on solving even bigger, by today's standards, insurmountable problems, understanding genomics and figuring out how to make better drugs, figuring out how to do all sorts of things that the current technologies just make too expensive or too risky. So I think anybody worried about the advances and the career opportunities that will be created by AI isn't a very good student
of history. New technologies will enable us to build a better world. They will create more new, exciting, not just jobs, but whole industries that we don't even think about today. And I think that's a recurring theme. But it does require that people be prepared for better and faster education about these new things, And I think we need kids to grow up learning that they've got to remain learners
their whole life because technology is moving so quickly. By the time they leave college, half of what they learned in college is now obsolete. They need to learn how to use cology as a tool and keep learning.
Thirty second, So the next first Robotics competition April seventeenth, twentieth in Houston, right real.
Quickly, seventeenth to the twentieth in Houston. Please be there. You guys should cover it.
It's going to be a celebration that will be the cross between the super Bowl and a rock concert. It's fun, it's important. We have thirty seven hundred corporate sponsors. Their qualcom again is our season sponsor.
You should be there well.
And as I said, I remember when I went will i Am was there and you're Boord is always really impressive. Really a cross section of leaders in the tech sector because they are watching very closely, because kids today are their future workforce, no doubt about it. Dean Cayman, thank you so much, appreciated. Founder First, as we said, joining us from Manchester, New Hampshire on this Monday,