Adobe Introduces AI Enhancements and Announces Price Increases and Dividends

Adobe has announced that it is granting access to a variety of generative artificial intelligence features in its software after an extensive testing period. In addition to increasing prices, Adobe intends to compensate the contributors responsible for developing these features.

Adobe makes Photoshop and other editing tools that form the core of its Creative Cloud subscription software business. Over the past six months, the company has been steadily adding new AI features to these programs, such as the ability to create images from text.

Adobe promises companies that content produced by its systems is legally safe to use, which has become a contentious issue as content creators sue tech companies over whether they are owed royalties for using their work to “train” AI systems. Adobe’s system is based on content that it either owns the rights to or is in the public domain, and the company offers its customers monetary compensation to support its claims.

On Wednesday, Adobe said prices for several of its subscription products would increase by $2 to $5 a month starting in November.

Adobe customers receive a certain amount of “credits” for using creative AI features. Once these Credits are used, users can pay more or continue using the features, but at a slower rate.

Adobe also said it will pay it to contributors to its image databases used to train AI systems.

This year, Adobe will award artists a one-time “contributor bonus” based on how many images they’ve added to Adobe’s database and how many times their images have been licensed through traditional means between June 3, 2022 and June 3, 2023.

After this, Adobe will start paying an annual fee for the educational work done with its artificial intelligence systems.

“We want our stock producers to continue to contribute, both for the stock market, which is paying more than ever before, and for the value they contribute to training these models,” said Ely Greenfield, chief technology officer for digital media at Adobe, told Reuters.