Google Bard can now generate AI images thanks to Adobe tech
Google is bringing text-to-image capabilities into Bard using Adobe's recently-announced Firefly tech
Today at Google I/O, Google announced that it is bringing text-to-image capabilities into Bard using Adobe’s recently-announced Firefly tech. What that really means is that you’ll be able to type something into Bard and have Firefly create an image for you. You can then take it onward to be edited in the Adobe Express app (and presumably Photoshop, too).
We’ve seen a bunch of AI image generators launch already, of course, including the DALL·E-backed Bing Image Creator but it’s impressive work for Google to move on Adobe’s tech considering it only went into Beta trial in March. Bard itself was only introduced in February, of course.
Adobe and Google will label the images as having been generated through AI, but given that the associated Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative is still nascent (despite having over 1000 companies and organisations involved), it remains to be seen if this will be effective. It will surely become more helpful as time goes on, however, as it becomes more important to tell the difference between images generated by AI and those developed by humans.
Adobe says that Adobe’s Firefly beta launch has been the company’s most successful beta ever with more than 70 million images generated during the first month it has been live. The engine has capabilities including text-to-image, vector re-colouring and text effects. The company says that Firefly is designed to be safe – Firefly’s first model has been trained on Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content and public domain content where copyright has expired.
Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
