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Adobe has just brought major AI-powered updates to Illustrator and Photoshop, as it officially integrates its artificial intelligence model Firefly.
Announced on Tuesday (July 23) the new releases aim to “accelerate creative workflows, save pros time, and empower designers to realize their visions faster.”
These elements are all powered by the Firefly Vector Model (beta) and the Firefly Image 3 Model and the update has already been put into action as everyone should be able to access it this week.
The Firefly-related features include Generative Shape Fill, Dimension Tool, Mockup, Text to Pattern, Contextual Taskbar, and more general performance enhancement tools in Illustrator.
For Photoshop, AI elements are now included in the Selection Brush Tool, Generate Image, Adjustment Brush Tool, and other workflow measures.
The senior vice president of digital media at Adobe Ashley Still said these features should “maximize productivity and accelerate workflows across ideation, design, and production.
“Adobe’s new innovations in Illustrator and Photoshop are built directly into designers’ existing workflows, offering new ways to create and helping them to work faster and focus on what they do best – drawing, designing and bringing their creative visions to life.”
What are Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator’s new AI features?
Adobe Firefly is the technology company’s generative machine learning model which became part of the Creative Cloud offering upon its release in March 2023.
One of its most notable elements is its text-to-image generator capabilities which are now added to Photoshop. Like with competitor models, a prompt is needed and then the tool will spit out an AI image matching your description.
Also new to Photoshop is Generative Fill which is where images can be generated and missing elements or backgrounds filled in or even vector outlines created.
Full list of added AI features into Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator  

All-new Generative Shape Fill in Illustrator empowers designers to quickly add detailed vectors to shapes in designer’s own unique style for concept ideation or more detail in existing artwork and designs.
Enhanced Text to Pattern in Illustrator speeds up the creative process, empowering designers to ideate, create and scale customized vector patterns across design projects using simple text prompts.
Style Reference in Illustrator helps designers quickly edit and scale vector graphic creations, including subjects, scenes and icons, in their own unique style.
Generate Image in Photoshop removes the blank page by jump starting ideation and creation with new levels of creative control directly in Photoshop, powered by Adobe Firefly Image 3 Model.
Enhance Detail in Generative Fill in Photoshop delivers greater sharpness and detail in large size image formats.

Smaller changes have been made to current tools too.

Mockup in Illustrator delivers the ability to easily create high-quality visual prototypes of art on objects like product packaging, apparel and more by automatically adjusting the art to fit the curves and edges of the real-life object.
Dimension tool in Illustrator helps designers easily plot precise sizing to projects in a few clicks for packaging design, architectural drawings, fashion patterns and more.
Retype in Illustrator helps designers conveniently convert static text to live, editable text and identify the perfect font for projects.
Enhanced selection capabilities in Illustrator including the new Enclosed Rectangular Marquee Selection helps designers select objects more precisely and with more precision, which is especially useful in intricate and crowded designs.
Enhanced Pan and Zoom capabilities in Illustrator deliver faster and smoother performance so designers can navigate highly complex documents with speed and ease – up to 10 times faster with scalability from 3.13% to 64,000%.
Contextual Taskbar speeds up workflows with a menu that presents relevant next steps in the user’s design process.
Selection Brush Tool in Photoshop makes selecting, compositing and applying filters intuitive.
Adjustment Brush in Photoshop enables users to easily apply non-destructive adjustments to specific portions of images.
In Photoshop, enhancements to the Type Tool delivers faster and less-manual ways of creating bulleted and numbered lists and improvements in the Contextual Taskbar introduce popular settings for working with shapes and rotating objects.

Featured Image: Photo by Emily Bernal on Unsplash
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Alphabet will be spending an extra $5 billion on its self-driving company Waymo.
The parent company of Google has committed to a new ‘multi-year investment’ which was announced by chief officer Ruth Porat during a second-quarter earnings call.
“This new round of funding, which is consistent with recent annual investment levels, will enable Waymo to continue to build the world’s leading autonomous driving technology company.”
The California-based Waymo was formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project and is referred to as the world’s first autonomous ride-hailing service.
The Co-CEO Tekedra N Mawakana took to X (formerly Twitter) to share the news and her gratitude, writing: “Alphabet has committed up to $5B to Waymo.
“We are grateful for their immense vote of confidence in our team and recognizing the amazing progress we’ve made with our technology, product, and commercialization efforts.”

Alphabet has committed up to $5B to @Waymo. We are grateful for their immense vote of confidence in our team and recognizing the amazing progress we’ve made with our technology, product, and commercialization efforts.
— Tekedra N Mawakana (@TechTekedra) July 23, 2024

Porat also said Google will be focusing on improving overall efficiencies in its ‘other bets’ segment. This segment includes Google Ventures, the drone company Wing, the research organization Verily, and the biotechnology company Calico.
“Waymo is an important example of this, with its technical leadership coupled with progress on operational performance,” said the executive.
On the call, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly said how the company is now delivering well over 50,000 paid rides per week. This number was also noted in Waymo’s announcement blog post about expanding in San Francisco.
It isn’t yet known how the $5 billion will be spent, but Alphabet’s 10-Q form could have more details when this is officially filed.
What is Waymo?
Waymo is a vehicle service where people can order a car to take them to their destination and it will do so without anyone in the driver’s seat.
While the company was founded in 2009, the technology hasn’t yet expanded to all areas of the U.S., but upcoming projects and goals could point to the Waymo Driver becoming more commonplace throughout the country.
Currently, the driver has been tested across 13 states and San Francisco is the latest place to be able to access fully autonomous rides.
Before operating in a new area, each city and town has to be mapped out with extreme detail. This includes lane markers, stop signs, curbs, crosswalks, and more.
The driver then uses all data, including the custom maps and real-time sensor information, to determine its exact road location.
When looking at the amount of rides taken across major urban areas, over the last six years, the company writes that the Waymo Driver “avoids high-severity collisions better than even the most attentive human drivers.”
They go on to say how data shows that “we have fewer insurance claims and injuries or police reports than human drivers.”
Featured Image: Via Waymo’s X Account
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Tesla will deploy humanoid robots next year, according to the company founder and CEO, Elon Musk. 
Initially, the EV giant will produce and deploy the robots for their own use, before they are available commercially in 2026. 
The project is well-advanced with the Optimus robot set to be introduced in Tesla factories by the end of this year.  
Optimus, named with a nod to the Autobots chief in the Transformers series, is around 1.7 meters in height and weighs 56 kilos. It is optimized to carry out  “boring, repetitious, and dangerous” work. 
Musk made the announcement on X, just a day before the company was due to produce its latest financial results. On Monday, shares spiked by more than 5% by the end of trading in New York on Monday.
“Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026.”

Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2024

Tesla’s other interests beyond EVs
Tesla – which is tipped to see its Cybertruck enter the Fortnite realm – has previously showcased the “Tesla Bot” and later Musk claimed the company’s robot business would exceed the value of its car interests, so this is a long-term vision that appears close to fruition. 
Amid a drop in demand for EVs, there appears to be more attention given to alternate ventures. Robots, as well as AI and autonomous driving, are the other areas that Musk is seeking to fully exploit. 
He had hoped to unveil the Robotaxi on Aug. 8 after comments made earlier this year, but in recent days a delay was all but confirmed, as expected. The billionaire entrepreneur added that a change to the design of the front of the vehicle was one of some revisions worked on. 
“The extra time allows us to show off a few other things,” he stated.
Image credit: Via Ideogram
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