Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek
Speaker 2: on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Want to get to our next story? This was interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, we have written about this at Bloomberg. When
Speaker 1: Adobe released its Firefly image generating software last year, the
Speaker 1: company said that AI model was trained mainly on Adobe Stock,
Speaker 1: its database of hundreds of millions of licensed images. Firefly,
Speaker 1: Adobe said, was a commercially safe alternative to competitors such
Speaker 1: as mad Journey, which learned by scraping pictures from across
Speaker 1: the Internet.
Speaker 3: Behind the scenes, Adobe also was relying in part on
Speaker 3: AI generated content to train Firefly, including from those same
Speaker 3: AI rivals. In numerous presentations and public posts about how
Speaker 3: Firefly is safer than the competition due to its training data,
Speaker 3: Adobe never made clear that its model actually used images
Speaker 3: from some of these same competitors. This latest reporting from
Speaker 3: our own Rachel Metz and Brodie for just last week
Speaker 3: about how Adobe promotes its tool as say, from content
Speaker 3: scraped from the Internet. We've got with us Ashley Still,
Speaker 3: Senior vice president and general manager of Creative Business at Adobe.
Speaker 3: She's back with us, she joins us from Menlo Park, California.
Speaker 4: Ashley, good to have you with us. How are you.
Speaker 5: I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks so much for coming back with us. I
Speaker 3: do want to start here. Given our colleagues recent reporting,
Speaker 3: we should know Adobe did say that a relatively small amount,
Speaker 3: about five percent of the images used to train its
Speaker 3: AI tool was generated by other AI platforms. Can you
Speaker 3: add anything here given what you work on at the company.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, so, you know, we continue to you know,
Speaker 5: we stand by and have stood by Firefly as commercially
Speaker 5: safe as you mentioned since we launched. And what this
Speaker 5: means is we are incredibly confident and have you know,
Speaker 5: some very significant measures in place to make sure that
Speaker 5: the content generated by Firefly doesn't infringe on copyright, I
Speaker 5: P trademarks, you know, you name it, and and you know,
Speaker 5: as as as an example of how we stand by that,
Speaker 5: we actually offer indemnification for the content that is that
Speaker 5: is generated by Firefly to businesses.
Speaker 4: So in terms of ghead, Tim Well, I was just
Speaker 4: going to say, so, if why wasn't the company or
Speaker 4: hasn't the company been clear about the fact, at least
Speaker 4: from the beginning that Firefly was trained on some generative
Speaker 4: AI from the same same kind of companies that Adobe
Speaker 4: has publicly tried to distance itself from.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I I think we uh it. We
Speaker 5: have always been clear that there is some AI generated
Speaker 5: content that's used in training and uh and you know,
Speaker 5: in fact, I think as as editing that that is
Speaker 5: AI system becomes more, it's going to be harder and
Speaker 5: harder to say that there's any image doesn't have some
Speaker 5: AI generated aspects of that image, right. And I think
Speaker 5: in the past, I've we've talked about some of the
Speaker 5: capabilities that we've released in Photoshop, So we've always been
Speaker 5: clear about that. You know, we actually don't necessarily have
Speaker 5: a lot of information about the source of the AI
Speaker 5: that's generated, and that's why we focus so much on
Speaker 5: making sure that again the content, that anything that's submitted
Speaker 5: to Adobe stock doesn't have any owned aspects of that
Speaker 5: of anything in that image, right Again, no copyright, trademark,
Speaker 5: identifiable characteristics as part of that image. So we've been
Speaker 5: pretty consistent about that. I think what's happened recently is
Speaker 5: some very specific questions about, well, could there be images
Speaker 5: generated from specific sources, And of course there could be
Speaker 5: there could be I am curious.
Speaker 1: Are we are curious? You know, if you've got any
Speaker 1: calls from customers maybe about the possible confusion here about
Speaker 1: you know, are we really one hundred percent commercially safe
Speaker 1: or is it more like ninety five percent commercially safe.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what our customers want to know is are we
Speaker 5: indemnifying them?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: And the answer is one hundred percent yes. Right, nothing's changed,
Speaker 5: and nothing's changed about our confidence in that Firefly will
Speaker 5: not produce content that infringes on other people's owned marks, content,
Speaker 5: et cetera. Right, And we do that again by being
Speaker 5: really careful about the content that we train on. As
Speaker 5: I mentioned, everything goes to regardless of the source, whether
Speaker 5: it's generated by a camera or sketch with a human hand.
Speaker 6: Or.
Speaker 5: Assisted or created through artificial intelligence. Every piece of content
Speaker 5: goes through a moderation process through our Adobe stock marketplace
Speaker 5: before it ever is used to train anything. And so
Speaker 5: we really do that regardless of the source of the content,
Speaker 5: and that's a huge part of it. The other aspect
Speaker 5: is the types of things and prompts that we actually
Speaker 5: allow you to create. And so again nothing's changed in
Speaker 5: terms of the process and the technology that we have
Speaker 5: in place to give us this confidence around commercial safety.
Speaker 1: I do wonder too, does it give you at Ashley
Speaker 1: by really training mainly on Adobe stock, which I can
Speaker 1: imagine is massive and growing every day or every second.
Speaker 1: Having said that, right, we know that generative AI is
Speaker 1: going to be made better by more more information that
Speaker 1: has put into it, more and more data. So do
Speaker 1: you limit kind of set to some in some regard
Speaker 1: the upside of the potential of all of this by
Speaker 1: keeping it I understand, by keeping it commercially safe very
Speaker 1: important for clients, But is there some limitations as a
Speaker 1: result of that in terms of I don't know creativity
Speaker 1: or ability because that's opening it to everything.
Speaker 5: Well, that's a great question and actually very relevant to
Speaker 5: another piece of news that we announced today. So we
Speaker 5: actually announced two things today. First, we are showcasing video
Speaker 5: AI workflows that will be bringing into Premiere Pro later
Speaker 5: this year, which is incredibly exciting. And then we also
Speaker 5: kind of snuck or showed some early explorations around things
Speaker 5: that we're exploring with third parties around bringing third party
Speaker 5: models into our applications, and in this case it is
Speaker 5: specifically partners in the video space or potential partners with
Speaker 5: in the video space with Open Ai, Sora with Runway,
Speaker 5: and in a smaller company called Peka. And to your point,
Speaker 5: models are going to be good at different things, right,
Speaker 5: and whether it's the training approach or whether it is
Speaker 5: you know, just the decisions made about what the model
Speaker 5: is for and the use case that it's solving. In
Speaker 5: the case of Firefly, one of the things that we've
Speaker 5: really prioritized is creative control and controllability because we deeply
Speaker 5: integrate Firefly into our creative applications like Photoshop, and in
Speaker 5: the case of video, certainly Premiere Pro because our customers
Speaker 5: want to edit content with AI. They want to take
Speaker 5: their original images, you know, in video and produce the
Speaker 5: content that there that they want to produce faster and
Speaker 5: with more creative expression than ever before. But in some
Speaker 5: cases there might be use cases that models are good
Speaker 5: are great at.
Speaker 2: Actually that isn't a.
Speaker 5: Focose for us.
Speaker 3: I want to jump in because we only have thirty
Speaker 3: seconds left and I'm so curious about this. How do
Speaker 3: you prevent deep fakes and stuff from this generative AI video?
Speaker 5: Sure, so that is going to be a huge area
Speaker 5: focused and content credentials is absolutely critical. You can think
Speaker 5: of that as a nutrition label for content. There's an
Speaker 5: open standard that Adobe started with many partners. I think
Speaker 5: there's over two thousand companies that are now part of
Speaker 5: this part of this open standard, and we think that
Speaker 5: it's incredibly important for any editing tool or generative tool
Speaker 5: to just be to put metadata in the content and
Speaker 5: then enable consumers to quickly and easily see how the
Speaker 5: content that they're consuming every day was created.
Speaker 1: Always great to check in with you and find out
Speaker 1: what you guys are up to with all of this.
Speaker 1: Ashley still over at Adobe.
Speaker 3: We always like to remind everyone that our next guest
Speaker 3: is the inventor of the segue. You know it, of course,
Speaker 3: the human transporter that balances itself. And he also holds
Speaker 3: Carol a variety of past variety, variety.
Speaker 1: We've all lost count so many.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say what millions, but there's a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: His focus now expanding the reach of First Robotics competitions
Speaker 3: and the minds of young people.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've been lucky to go to one of the events,
Speaker 1: the competitions many years ago in Saint Louis. It's so cool.
Speaker 1: Dean came In is the founder of First Witch stands
Speaker 1: for for inspiration and recognition of science and technology. He
Speaker 1: joins us from Manchester, New Hampshire. Dean, so great to
Speaker 1: have you back with us. Actually, Wes, we were preparing
Speaker 1: for this segment. One of our producers are you to
Speaker 1: producer Elizabeth Sedron. She actually was competing in the first
Speaker 1: robotics competition in St. Louis, which I was covering for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg TV at the time.
Speaker 3: Back at World's Crossing.
Speaker 1: You didn't even know it, but she talked about what
Speaker 1: a great experience it was to be part of it.
Speaker 1: So great to have you back with us, And yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like all of our worlds are colliding right here.
Speaker 1: How are you and tell us about the latest round
Speaker 1: of first and what you guys are up to.
Speaker 6: So things are great here. In my day job, I
Speaker 6: have about one thousand engineers. We're working out all sorts
Speaker 6: of NEAT projects. We just got the FDA approval on
Speaker 6: of really small, wearable high performance insulin pump.
Speaker 2: For people with diabetes.
Speaker 6: We are working on all sorts of other projects at Army,
Speaker 6: our Advanced Regenerate Manufacturing Institute which has now got two
Speaker 6: hundred members, and we're manufacturing cells tissues in oregons, hopefully
Speaker 6: some of which will be through the FDA relatively soon.
Speaker 6: In FDA provinces, we're doing all sorts of neat stuff,
Speaker 6: but every one of our projects and every member of
Speaker 6: ARM is suffering from the same issue talent, talent and talent.
Speaker 6: And the good news is it's now become common knowledge
Speaker 6: to our government leaders, our industry leaders, our education leaders
Speaker 6: that the most critical shortage of this country has is
Speaker 6: really passionate, talented stem folks. And as you know, thirty
Speaker 6: five years ago and I started first, I was telling
Speaker 6: people that until we can make science, technology, engineering and
Speaker 6: mathematics as exciting to kids, as accessible to kids, as
Speaker 6: rewarding to kids as football and basketball and the world
Speaker 6: of entertainment, this country will continue to celebrate those things,
Speaker 6: sports and entertainment and create the world's best people in
Speaker 6: sports and entertainment.
Speaker 2: But that's not going to keep this country going.
Speaker 6: We need to get kids, particularly women and minorities that
Speaker 6: culturally have been literally pushed away from thinking about careers
Speaker 6: and science and technology. So as you know that the
Speaker 6: power to me of sports to engage kids and get
Speaker 6: them passionate seemed to be all we got to do
Speaker 6: create create a science engineering competition that could compete for.
Speaker 2: The hearts and minds of these kids. And we went
Speaker 2: from twenty three teams thirty five years ago.
Speaker 6: This year we have over eighty thousand schools worldwide.
Speaker 2: We have one hundred countries involved.
Speaker 6: The championship, which starts on Wednesday and goes to Saturday,
Speaker 6: will this year be in Houston, no longer in Saint Louis,
Speaker 6: but we'll have over fifty thousand people from representing all
Speaker 6: the teams from around the country and around the world
Speaker 6: competing there. Over a thousand teams will be there.
Speaker 2: You should be there. It's going to be fantastic.
Speaker 1: And here we are showing for those who are watching
Speaker 1: on YouTube and Blueberg Originals some of the past competitions,
Speaker 1: and if you are not familiar and you have kids,
Speaker 1: you should just google it and check it out because
Speaker 1: it really is about kids building and making things, competing
Speaker 1: and love it.
Speaker 3: It's really really cool. Dean, I'm wondering, obviously First has
Speaker 3: grown so much in the last thirty five years, but
Speaker 3: I'm wondering if how this is viewed by local governments,
Speaker 3: how it's viewed by school boards, how STEM is viewed
Speaker 3: in the classroom as part of a child's education here
Speaker 3: in the US. I'm wondering if that's gotten any better
Speaker 3: over the last thirty five years.
Speaker 2: Well, i'd like to.
Speaker 6: I'd say First is taking credit for making it a
Speaker 6: lot better. Our Governor Chris Sinunu announced earlier this year
Speaker 6: that we're going to put a first kit and a
Speaker 6: first robotics program not in every school in the state,
Speaker 6: but in every classroom in the state because our newer
Speaker 6: little robotics kids don't cost a whole lot more than
Speaker 6: a single textbook.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 6: And by the way, last Thursday evening, we had a
Speaker 6: huge event in Washington, DC, and our Secretary of Commerce,
Speaker 6: Gina Romando, was there pointing out that it is so
Speaker 6: critical to get STEM up in the hearts and minds
Speaker 6: of kids around the country.
Speaker 2: And as you know, the Chip act is going to.
Speaker 6: Put out more than fifty billion dollars, but it's not
Speaker 6: going to help, as she pointed out, unless we have
Speaker 6: the people with the skill sets to fill these factories
Speaker 6: to make these chips, to write the code.
Speaker 2: To do the AI, to use the AI.
Speaker 6: So the answer to your question is, I think STEM
Speaker 6: is finally and I'd like to think first has something
Speaker 6: to do with it really becoming front and center to
Speaker 6: serious people that are looking to the long term future
Speaker 6: of this country's needs. And we've got to get back
Speaker 6: to getting all kids from all backgrounds more excited about STEM.
Speaker 6: And as I said, we have a sport that's as
Speaker 6: exciting as every other sport. But the only difference between
Speaker 6: first and every other sport is an our sport, every
Speaker 6: kid on every team can turn pro.
Speaker 2: And that's why your business.
Speaker 6: Community or to be demanding that they have first teams
Speaker 6: in every school.
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting. You know, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things I would agree with that, and it's like
Speaker 1: we talk a lot about just financial know how, in
Speaker 1: other words, you know, planning for your retirement savings. I agree.
Speaker 1: It's another thing that kids should be taught pretty early.
Speaker 1: Having said that you talked about AI and that you
Speaker 1: your thinking is, listen, we're going to need more engineers
Speaker 1: more than ever before because of it. Go there a
Speaker 1: little bit more deeply, because I do wonder about your perspective.
Speaker 1: Someone who makes things, has made lots of things, and
Speaker 1: thinks about technology and the things that are innovating or
Speaker 1: disrupting kind of how we do things. When you look
Speaker 1: at AI, generative AI, machine learning, what will be mandatory
Speaker 1: because you know some of the discussions that are going
Speaker 1: on Dean right now is that it's going to replace
Speaker 1: a lot of technical jobs. How do you see it
Speaker 1: someone who's been in this world making and understanding technology
Speaker 1: and a level that many don't.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm no historian, but I think pessimists that are
Speaker 6: always afraid of innovation, always afraid of change, always look
Speaker 6: at the worst possible outcomes. I am sure that hundreds
Speaker 6: of years ago, when the first steam engines came along,
Speaker 6: people predicted that there'd be no more work for labor
Speaker 6: for backbreaking ditch diggers, because a steam engine could do
Speaker 6: the work of ten thousand of them. But what they
Speaker 6: didn't realize is, once you've got bulldozers, you're not going
Speaker 6: to build tiny holes with a small number of people.
Speaker 6: You're going to build super highways that cross continents. Once
Speaker 6: we develop a new technology, yes, it'll replace some people
Speaker 6: that were doing some of it in the past. But
Speaker 6: if the new technology is more empowering and more efficient,
Speaker 6: all that it does is open up huge expanses in
Speaker 6: new human growth and opportunity. And so I can't think
Speaker 6: of a single new technology that, while it always displaces,
Speaker 6: let's say, some piece of the current world, it always
Speaker 6: expands more and better opportunities. And I can't imagine that
Speaker 6: the people that might be displaced from doing boring, repetitive
Speaker 6: jobs that can have robotic systems take their place, not
Speaker 6: just physically, but even in terms of the technology that
Speaker 6: is behind. AI will give engineers more powerful tools that
Speaker 6: will give more people more capability to focus on solving
Speaker 6: even bigger, by today's standards, insurmountable problems, understanding genomics and
Speaker 6: figuring out how to make better drugs, figuring out how
Speaker 6: to do all sorts of things that the current technologies
Speaker 6: just make too expensive or too risky. So I think
Speaker 6: anybody worried about the advances and the career opportunities that
Speaker 6: will be created by AI isn't a very good student
Speaker 6: of history. New technologies will enable us to build a
Speaker 6: better world. They will create more new, exciting, not just jobs,
Speaker 6: but whole industries that we don't even think about today.
Speaker 6: And I think that's a recurring theme. But it does
Speaker 6: require that people be prepared for better and faster education
Speaker 6: about these new things, And I think we need kids
Speaker 6: to grow up learning that they've got to remain learners
Speaker 6: their whole life because technology is moving so quickly. By
Speaker 6: the time they leave college, half of what they learned
Speaker 6: in college is now obsolete. They need to learn how
Speaker 6: to use cology as a tool and keep learning.
Speaker 1: Thirty second, So the next first Robotics competition April seventeenth,
Speaker 1: twentieth in Houston, right real.
Speaker 2: Quickly, seventeenth to the twentieth in Houston. Please be there.
Speaker 2: You guys should cover it.
Speaker 6: It's going to be a celebration that will be the
Speaker 6: cross between the super Bowl and a rock concert. It's fun,
Speaker 6: it's important. We have thirty seven hundred corporate sponsors. Their
Speaker 6: qualcom again is our season sponsor.
Speaker 2: You should be there well.
Speaker 1: And as I said, I remember when I went will
Speaker 1: i Am was there and you're Boord is always really impressive.
Speaker 1: Really a cross section of leaders in the tech sector
Speaker 1: because they are watching very closely, because kids today are
Speaker 1: their future workforce, no doubt about it. Dean Cayman, thank
Speaker 1: you so much, appreciated. Founder First, as we said, joining
Speaker 1: us from Manchester, New Hampshire on this Monday,