Adobe is adding some new generative AI tools to its Photoshop creative software that aim to give users additional ways to control the designs they generate. Powered by Adobe’s new Firefly Image 3 foundation model, these new tools are available today via the Photoshop beta desktop app, and will be generally available “later this year” according to Adobe’s Press release.
The most notable tool is Reference Image, which uses user-uploaded images to inspire the output generated by Adobe’s AI, matching similar elements in style and color. For example, instead of repeatedly tweaking a prompt description like “a blue vintage truck with flower decals,” users can instead provide a reference image that Photoshop will use as a guide.
For what it’s worth, in my brief unscientific testing, Image 3 does appear to be a step up from Image 2.
I wasn’t able to try Image 3 myself. But Adobe PR sent a few outputs and prompts from the model, and I managed to run those same prompts through Image 2 on the web to get samples to compare the Image 3 outputs with. (Keep in mind that the Image 3 outputs could’ve been cherry-picked.)
Naturally, this perplexes us. If a computer can write like a person, what does that say about the nature of our own creativity? What, if anything, sets us apart? And if AI does indeed supplant human writing, what will humans—both readers and writers—lose? The stakes feel tremendous, dwarfing any previous wave of automation. Written expression changed us as a civilization; we recognize that so well that we use the invention of writing to demarcate the past into prehistory and history. The erosion of writing promises to be equally momentous.
People who click on this ad are sent to the Apple App Store, where the same app is billed as an “art generator,” and makes no reference to the fact that it can generate nudes. This is a well established loophole in the mobile app stores Sam and I first reported on in 2022. These apps make no mention of adult content on their app store pages or on their sites because it’s against the app stores’ policies, but were actively promoting their ability to create nonconsensual deepfake porn on other porn tube sites.
I cannot tell how little I want THE SOFTWARE FOR MY MOUSE to include features tied to ChatGPT … let alone a mouse with a built-in button to start a prompt.
FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, is close to an agreement with Apple that would give the tech company worldwide television rights for a major new tournament, a monthlong, World Cup-style competition for top teams that will be played for the first time in the United States next summer.
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Should the deal go through, it would be the first time that FIFA, which will stage the first expanded 48-team men’s World Cup in the United States in 2026, has agreed to a single worldwide contract. It would also represent the latest foray into soccer for Apple, which in 2022 signed a 10-year, $2.5 billion agreement for the global streaming rights to Major League Soccer.
Sonos’ fundamental goal was making everything feel faster and getting you where you want to be without relying on a tabbed navigation bar. Now, everything is on the homescreen, and you can customize the layout to put your favorite playlists up top. Want your line-in audio source positioned higher than everything else? You can do that, too. You can pin specific carousels from music apps (like Spotify’s “new releases”) to the homescreen as well. And there’s a persistent search bar at the bottom, so finding music is always just a single tap away.
Apple has reportedly acquired Datakalab, a Paris, France-based startup specializing in artificial intelligence compression and computer vision technology. According to French business magazine Challenges, the acquisition was finalized in December.
Datakalab described itself as “experts in low power, runtime efficient, and deep learning algorithms” that work on device.
Apple added eight Chinese suppliers and removed four contractors on the mainland during its past financial year ended September, the first time since 2021 that the US tech giant introduced more suppliers from the country than it cut, according to its newly published supplier list.
Despite Apple’s recent efforts to diversify its supply chain and shift more production elsewhere in Asia amid geopolitical risks, mainland China remains the firm’s main manufacturing base, home to over a third of the factories run by its 187 disclosed suppliers, according to a Post analysis.
Meta has started licensing the operating system for its Quest headset to other hardware makers, starting with Lenovo and Asus. It’s also making a limited-run, gaming-focused Quest with Xbox.
The success of Microsoft's licensing of Windows operating system (as well as MS-DOS previously) to hardware manufacturers -- leading to monopoly powers -- has sort of tainted many in having the opinion that for a platform owner to be truly successful, they must license their operating system. We saw the Apple of yore trying to rescue its Macintosh business by licesning Mac OS, and then saw its future dimmed further. We saw Google licensing Android for free (in both sense), and then craw back with Google Play services.
Licensing of the operating system has nothing to do with the success of the platform. Meta's mixed-reality operating system may well be successful, but I am predicting that will not come because it has many hardware manufacturers.
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