Adobe putting apps inside ChatGPT marks its biggest Agentic AI integration yet

AFew weeks after adobe brick number one proclaimed its intention to establish agentic unreal intelligence (AI) features that would link its creative apps with OpenAI’s ChatGPT alongside Project Moonlight at the annual MAX keynote, the tech company has made its three popular creative and productivity apps available within ChatGPT.This means Photoshop, Acrobat and Adobe Express are now accessible as apps within OpenAI’s chatbot, unlocking the ability to edit photos, create designs and manage PDF documents within a ChatGPT session.Adobe believes that with ChatGPT’s more than 800 million active users, many of whom may also be its subscribers, the integration is likely to appeal to a large overlap of users. The company also hopes it will expand its reach and introduce its apps to many more people.“We’re thrilled to bring Photoshop, Adobe Express and Acrobat directly into ChatGPT, combining our creative innovations with the ease of ChatGPT to make creativity accessible for everyone. Now hundreds of millions of people can edit with Photoshop simply by using their own words, right inside a platform that’s already part of their day-to-day routine,” president of digital media at Adobe David Wadhwani said in a statement.HT had analysed Adobe’s plans in October, noting that implementation would enhance prompting and editing. At the keynote, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen had said, “Creativity is a balance of innovation, and imagination, technology, and humanity. We will provide the tools, platforms, and integrate with the ecosystems, to empower creators, to unleash their boldest imagination.”The integration within ChatGPT further extends what was already a diverse, three-pronged approach, including Adobe’s own Firefly models, partner models including those from OpenAI and Google, as well as custom models that will help creatives and businesses find an AI with focused relevance.Adobe’s apps within ChatGPT will work with natural language prompts typical of interactions with AI chatbots, and there will be intuitive controls as well, such as sliders and selectors, for precise editing where required. Adobe insists this is not an attempt to make “lightweight” versions of Photoshop, Acrobat and Adobe Express available within ChatGPT, but a broader synergy where a user doesn’t need to exit the ChatGPT interface to get the results they want.For Photoshop, users can adjust specific parts of an uploaded image (currently limited to 20MB per image), fine-tune settings such as contrast and exposure, adjust background elements such as removing or blurring, and apply creative effects including Glow.The Adobe Express experience will include the ability to browse the library of professional designs within the chat interface, fill in text, replace an image or change elements within a theme, and make iterative edits to a design. With the productivity-focused Acrobat for ChatGPT, users can upload (file size limited to 100MB per document, for now) and edit PDFs directly within the chat (while preserving format and quality, Adobe insists), extract text or tables, merge multiple documents, and compress or convert files to PDF.Adobe says Photoshop for ChatGPT, Adobe Express for ChatGPT and Acrobat for ChatGPT will be available for free for now, and the launch is worldwide.“Our innovations in agentic conversational interfaces are making it possible to bring Adobe’s apps to third-party platforms like ChatGPT, where hundreds of millions of people already work every day. By making Photoshop, Adobe Express, and Acrobat available in ChatGPT, we’re giving users an accessible way to do creative work — editing vacation photos, creating event invitations, transforming documents — while delivering the precision and control that define Adobe’s tools, all inside the chat,” chief technology officer of Digital Media business at Adobe Ely Greenfield said.“This builds on the foundational investments we’ve made in AI assistants across our own apps and allows us to meet customers where they already are as working with AI agents becomes the starting point for accomplishing everyday tasks. And for anyone who wants the full power of our tools, it’s seamless to move from ChatGPT into our native apps,” he added.On data privacy and security, Adobe says Acrobat for ChatGPT gives users the option to remove confidential details from documents before sharing them. However, while Adobe maintains that it does not train its generative AI models on customer data, it notes that OpenAI users—including those using Adobe apps within ChatGPT—remain subject to OpenAI’s data handling and training policies.Is Adobe concerned that extending advanced app functionalities to ChatGPT will lead users away from dedicated Adobe apps on desktop and mobile?The company insists this is not a concern. Instead, it sees the integration as a way to expand its reach to a much wider demographic of potentially new users. It points out that Acrobat and Adobe Express already reach over 700 million monthly active users directly, and millions more through third-party integrations with platforms including Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Slack and Box. These integrations, Adobe believes, help drive more usage of its tools, not less.