Adobe Adds AI Tools to its Stock Photography Business

Figurines are seen in front of the Adobe logo in this illustration taken June 13, 2022. (Reuters)
Figurines are seen in front of the Adobe logo in this illustration taken June 13, 2022. (Reuters)
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Adobe Adds AI Tools to its Stock Photography Business

Figurines are seen in front of the Adobe logo in this illustration taken June 13, 2022. (Reuters)
Figurines are seen in front of the Adobe logo in this illustration taken June 13, 2022. (Reuters)

Adobe on Tuesday added software tools that let its customers use artificial intelligence to create images based on its library of stock images, while still paying the original creators of those images.

Adobe, the company behind tools such as Photoshop that are widely used in the content creation business, has been rushing to add AI tools to its software as it faces image generation technology from newer firms such as OpenAI. Adobe's strategy has been to ensure that content it generates is legally safe to use in commercial work and to compensate artists, Reuters reported

The tools released Tuesday let customers start with a stock image from Adobe's collection then modify it with AI to meet their needs. The creator of the original image is compensated as if their unmodified original image was used.

Matthew Smith, vice president at Adobe for strategy, design and emerging products, said that while some Adobe users like to generate images from text prompts, many customers want conventional stock imagery modified a bit for their specific purpose.

"A majority of people still have a blank canvas problem," Smith told Reuters. "Generative AI is not replacing stock (imagery). It's not replacing creatives or contributors. It's enhancing and giving them more potential opportunity to increase their earnings."



Amazon Offers Free Computing Power to AI Researchers, Aiming to Challenge Nvidia

(FILES) This picture taken on July 4, 2022 shows the logo of Amazon, a major online shopping company, displayed at Amazon Amagasaki Fulfillent Center in Amagasaki, Hyogo prefecture. (Photo by Kazuhiro NOGI / AFP)
(FILES) This picture taken on July 4, 2022 shows the logo of Amazon, a major online shopping company, displayed at Amazon Amagasaki Fulfillent Center in Amagasaki, Hyogo prefecture. (Photo by Kazuhiro NOGI / AFP)
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Amazon Offers Free Computing Power to AI Researchers, Aiming to Challenge Nvidia

(FILES) This picture taken on July 4, 2022 shows the logo of Amazon, a major online shopping company, displayed at Amazon Amagasaki Fulfillent Center in Amagasaki, Hyogo prefecture. (Photo by Kazuhiro NOGI / AFP)
(FILES) This picture taken on July 4, 2022 shows the logo of Amazon, a major online shopping company, displayed at Amazon Amagasaki Fulfillent Center in Amagasaki, Hyogo prefecture. (Photo by Kazuhiro NOGI / AFP)

Amazon.com's cloud computing unit on Tuesday said it will offer free computing power to researchers who want to use its custom artificial intelligence chips, aiming to challenge Nvidia's popularity among those researchers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) said it will offer credits to use its cloud data centers that it values at $110 million to researchers who want to tap Trainium, its chip for developing artificial intelligence models that competes with chips from Nvidia, as well as Advanced Micro Devices and Alphabet's cloud division.

AWS said researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, Berkeley, are taking part in the program. The company plans to make 40,000 of the first-generation Trainium chips available for the program, Reuters reported.

The move comes as AWS, still the largest cloud computing company by sales, has seen a sharp challenge from Microsoft as software developers look to harness new types of chips for AI work. AWS is hoping to gain attention for its own AI chips by taking a different strategy than Nvidia, said Gadi Hutt, who leads business development for the AI chips at AWS.

To program Nvidia's chips, most AI developers use what is called Cuda, Nvidia's flagship software, rather than programming the chip directly. AWS instead plans to publish documentation about the most fundamental part of its chip - what is called the instruction set architecture - and let customers program the chip directly.

Hutt said the approach is aimed at luring large customers who might want to make small tweaks that could add up to big gains when using tens of thousands of chips at a time.

"Think about folks that are using infrastructure and putting hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more" toward rented computing power, Hutt said. "They would take any opportunity possible to increase performance and reduce the cost."