Adobe is all set to break the odds when the Deepfakes era begins

July 15, 2022

4 mins read

At the start of the Deepfakes era, Adobe is prepared to defy the odds.

As technology advances, deepfake instances continue to frighten and entertain internet users. Deepfakes are becoming more often seen in news programs and blockbuster movies, among other forms of popular media. They were first developed as a strategy to deceive an uninformed audience with unpleasant changes. Deepfake technology worries still exist today, and a short YouTube search may turn up incredibly lifelike artwork that rivals that of pricey movies. The finest deepfake examples, however, do more than merely horrify viewers; they also demonstrate cutting-edge techniques for revolutionizing the production of films and artwork.

Imagine a deepfake video of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the house, in which her words and speech patterns have been altered to communicate a message that will offend a sizable portion of the electorate. Imagine that the technology used to produce the video is so advanced that it looks to be entirely authentic, making the manipulation imperceptible, in contrast to the sloppy deepfakes of Pelosi that were popular in 2020 and 2021—and were easily exposed. What effect might a film like this have on hotly fought House races during a midterm election?

That’s the conundrum Adobe, the creator of the most well-known picture and video editing tools in the world is grappling with as it reviews and redesigns its entire product line using artificial intelligence and deep learning methods. Upgrades to the brand-name Photoshop and Premiere Pro video editing programs are also included. But it’s also true that using the word “photoshop” to describe something today has a bad reputation. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen is all too acquainted with this fact.

According to Narayen, content authentication is currently the most crucial aspect of the internet. “When we produce material for the globe, [we must] assist with the authenticity or provenance of that content.”

So, three years ago, Adobe started a project called the Content Authenticity Initiative with a small group of partners from the media and technology sectors. The enterprise, as the 59-year-old Narayen refers to it, has expanded to include more than 700 businesses, with international events to publicize the push for “provenance,” in which content creators and consumers can, if they so choose, create and track a digital trail that identifies who created a specific video or image and any alterations they made to it.

Narayen has other problems besides deepfakes. The San Jose-based business Adobe reported the fiscal year 2021 revenue of $15.8 billion, although its projection fell short of Wall Street expectations in the previous two quarters. The usual suspects are at blame: increasing loan rates, supply-chain bottlenecks, and commercial embargoes in Russia and Belarus. Compared to a 26 percent decline in the Nasdaq, Adobe shares have fallen 47 percent to a recent $366 from their top of $688 a share in November. The firm is still expanding, but there has been a noticeable slowdown, according to Cornelio Ash, an analyst at William O’Neil & Co.

For many years, the majority of Adobe’s income has come from a collection of storied flagship products that it collectively refers to as its Digital Media division. 73 percent of its income in 2021 came from products including Photoshop, Illustrator (1987), Premiere Pro (2003), and Acrobat (1993). But despite a smooth cloud migration, these companies’ growth is waning. In the most recent quarter of Adobe, the group’s yearly recurring revenue growth dropped to 15.5 percent from its historical average of roughly 20 percent, according to Ash.

Then there is the 2012-released Digital Experience. These are services that Adobe offers businesses by looking at their customers’ “digital footprints,” or monitoring people’s online activity, such as how long they spend on a particular Web page and what items they look at.

“There is nothing more annoying than that experience,” adds Narayen, “if you’ve been in engaging or communicating with a consumer, and you still don’t act as if they know the customer.” The corporation hopes to alter that with the help of its Digital Experience unit. Although this is Adobe’s fastest-growing business unit, with $4 billion in revenue in 2021, up 24% from the previous year, it competes fiercely with companies like Salesforce and Google. Smaller rivals like the American company Docusign and the Australian graphic design platform Canva are among those posing a rising threat to Adobe. According to Chris Ross, a Gartner researcher, “Adobe was a bit slow to respond to the market area that Canva sought… a business sector that was not professional designers.”

Canva has rapidly developed into a serious competitor to Adobe’s products thanks to its lower price (beginning at just $120 a year) and simpler interface. Who wants to spend hours studying Illustrator and $600 a year on a Creative Suite membership merely to create a menu or a wedding invitation? Canva, which has been around for less than ten years, was valued at $40 billion in September. Its 35-year-old CEO, Melanie Perkins, is presently thought to be worth $6.5 billion.

Adobe has reacted. A new program called Creative Cloud Express, which is even less expensive than Canva, was released in December and is geared toward inexperienced users, including students and social media influencers. More generally, the firm doesn’t have a relaxed outlook. The “AI First” effort, launched by Adobe, aims to reimagine all of its products using deep learning and artificial intelligence. This can enable Photoshop adjustments that would often take hours to complete to be completed in a matter of minutes. According to Dana Rao, general counsel, and chief trust officer at Adobe, “AI delivers capabilities like sky replacement, where you can change blue to grey with the press of a button.” Then you may make little modifications, but it will move much more quickly.