Adobe on Monday said it plans to introduce new artificial intelligence (AI) features into its video editing software used by the film and television industries.

The tools will let video editors do things like change the lighting in a shot from midday to sunset or generate background music just by typing in a few words of text to tell the system what to do. The tools build on a new system called Adobe Firefly that the company introduced last month for generating still images and text.

Adobe is riding a wave of interest in generative AI spurred by applications from Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Stability AI that allow users to create novel images with just a few words of description. But after Getty Images sued Stability AI alleging that the startup misused Getty’s copyrighted images in training its AI system, legal questions clouded whether the output of such AI systems can be used in commercial work.

Adobe, one of the biggest suppliers of software for visual and video artists, is promising its customers that output from its Firefly system will be on safe legal ground for commercial use.

The new Adobe video tools will let users tell the AI system to read a script and then automatically generate a storyboard for the finished piece, even recommending some of the shots for a rough cut of the story. For the advertising industry, the system will include features that can take footage and generate different background music and scenery for showing the advertisement in different countries.

“With a single button, we can generate 1,000 versions of the same video that are localised,” Ivo Manolov, Adobe vice president digital and video audio enterprise offerings, told Reuters in an interview.

Adobe is testing the system now and plans to release the video tools later this year.

© Thomson Reuters 2023