Adding another major addition to the flurry of third-party video AI services available through the Firefly platform, Adobe announced a partnership that adds exclusive access to the newly released Runway Gen-4.5 and creates a co-development partnership for future video tools between the two companies.
“As AI transforms video production, professionals are turning to Adobe's creative ecosystem, from Firefly to Premiere to After Effects, to imagine, craft and extend their stories across every screen,” Ely Greenfield, CTO and senior vice president of digital media at Adobe, said in a statement. “Combining Runway's generative video innovation with Adobe's trusted professional workflows will help creators and brands expand their creative possibilities and meet the growing demands of modern content and media production.”
Under the multi-year agreement, Adobe will become Runway's “Preferred API Creative Partner.” This means that Firefly users will have early access to subsequent new AI models for Runway through Firefly. The latest models will also be available directly from Runway.
During Adobe's Max user conference in late October, the company announced significant upgrades to Firefly. Firefly debuted in 2023 as part of Adobe's largest image creation and marketing software.
The upgrade, announced in October, transforms the AI tools that generate images and videos into something much larger and is the gateway to many of the burgeoning AI industry's most popular large-scale language models for images and videos. The pitch: Once you subscribe to Firefly, you don't need a separate subscription to access LLM from almost any user. Today's announcement brings yet another long-awaited upgrade to one of the most prominent LLMs focused on creating realistic video clips.
The companies also said they will jointly develop specialized AI video capabilities for the specific needs of professional video workflows and make them available exclusively within Adobe applications, including Firefly. This should appeal to high-end video creators, from Hollywood to YouTube, brands and marketers, and commercial and industrial video creators.
Adobe has long been known as a powerhouse in graphics software, including Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro video editing software. The latest version of Firefly and the release of a free iOS app for Premiere represents Adobe's effort to stay relevant amid the onslaught of cheap and easy video and image creation in the AI era by a bevy of online-first companies.
Firefly users can try Gen-4.5 with “exclusive unlimited access” until December 22nd. This joins a long list of around 30 internal and external LLMs in Image and Video. Third-party authors include Google's Gemini and Veo tools with various flavors of the new and highly acclaimed Nano Banana tool, OpenAI's ChatGPT and Sora2, Luma AI's Ray2 and Ray3, and even the older Gen-4 version of Runway.
