Adobe Inc. is moving artificial intelligence into a slightly new direction, giving businesses the chance to create custom generative AI models rather than fine-tune existing ones.

The company is offering this through its new Adobe AI Foundry offering, which was announced today and allows businesses to work with it to create highly customized models trained on their own intellectual property and branding.

Adobe said the customized models will be based on its family of Firefly foundational large language models. It launched Firefly in 2023 with standard image generation capabilities, and has since transformed it to create almost any kind of content, including videos, audio, vector graphics and 3D scenes.

Notably, the Firefly models were trained entirely on licensed data, which makes them a safer bet for any businesses that might be worried about the implications of AI copyright breaches. With Adobe AI Foundry, which enhances Firefly with corporate data and branding, they can be further reassured that their customized models will be safe to use.

Adobe Vice President of Generative AI Business Ventures Hannah Elsakr told TechCrunch that the company is “surgically reopening” its Firefly models. She explained that most companies simply take a large language model – such as OpenAI’s GPT or Google LLC’s Gemini models – and connect to them through the company’s application programming interface.

By doing this, they can then tweak the model’s outputs, retraining it to generate answers or content according to their own preferences. This is generally known as “fine-tuning” and it can be a pretty simple process. In the case of OpenAI’s o3 mini model, it’s possible to fine-tune it for reasoning tasks with only a few prompts.

The Adobe AI Foundry does things differently. Elsakr explained that it works with businesses to integrate their IP, such as brand imagery and videos, and specific shot styles, into the base Firefly models in a process it calls “deep tuning,” rather than fine-tuning. She explained that the models are retrained using this corporate data, and “overweighted” to emphasize distinctive brand elements in their outputs.

Using these customized models, companies will be able to manage their marketing campaigns more easily, Elsakr said. For instance, once they create an advertisement, they’ll be able to use the model to adapt it for different markets, languages, seasons, channels and formats, without needing to begin from scratch each time. The adapted advertisement will maintain a consistent look and feel, only it will be created much faster.

Liz Miller of Constellation Research Inc. said large enterprises will be really excited to see what they can do with Adobe’s customized models, because they address the problem that fine-tuning isn’t enough. Whatever brands create with AI must then be tweaked to adhere to their unique voice, vision, fonts, colors and imagery, she explained. It’s further complicated by the fact that many companies operate multiple brands that each have their own voices, styles and nuances, she added.

“AI Foundry gives brands the means to rearchitect Adobe’s Firefly model to include their tone, tenor, voice, brand guidelines and visual identity ssystems, among other things,” Miller said. “It’s ideal for large enterprises with massive content needs across images, video, audio and even 3D content. Think brands like Disney, Netflix and Paramount. Adobe is offering them a managed service for companies to build their own Firefly models that reflect their unique styles.

Adobe plans to charge customers for its Adobe AI Foundry models based on how much they’re used, as opposed to its usual seat-based pricing.

Elsakr reiterated that the company doesn’t envisage AI replacing human creators, saying that the customized models are just improved versions of the Firefly tools they’re already using to accelerate their creative workflows. “Humanity is at the center of creativity and that can’t be replaced,” she insisted. “Firefly and Foundry are simply the next step in providing you with the useful tools that improve your storytelling skills.”

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