Adobe's AI video rollout lags behind while OpenAI launches rival Sora

By Brody Ford 

Adobe Inc. is rolling out its AI video product much more slowly than OpenAI’s rival Sora service, fueling concerns that the creative software company is falling behind. 

Two months after Adobe announced a browser-based tool that could generate videos from prompts or images using generative artificial intelligence, the product remains in limited testing, only accessible by a handful of creators who have agreements with the company. Sora, meanwhile, was made available to a wide audience this week.

 

“To best support a wide variety of use cases and to ensure model safety, we’re opening up access to the beta on a limited basis with a focus on gathering feedback,” Adobe says on its website, inviting users to “join the waitlist.”

 

The company, which releases quarterly earnings Wednesday, announced the product as part of its Firefly family of AI features during its annual user conference in early October. At the time, it said the tool was already “rolling out in limited public beta.” Adobe has also launched a tool in Premiere, its video-editing app, which lets users extend video clips using generative AI.

 

An Adobe spokesperson said Tuesday that the company will expand availability in the weeks and months ahead. “Adobe Firefly is the only commercially safe video model available and we’ve seen strong customer response following the release just six weeks ago.”

 

In an October interview after the announcement of its video tool, Adobe Chief Strategy Officer Scott Belsky said that the company was still working on final moderation and safety of the model.

 

On Monday, OpenAI made its video-generating model Sora available to those already paying for its chatbot ChatGPT. This full release comes nearly 10 months after the startup first publicly previewed the technology. Monday’s release led to technical difficulties for some users and OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman wrote on social network X that “we significantly underestimated demand for Sora.”

 

As startups including OpenAI, Midjourney and Runway AI have developed AI tools to generate photos and videos, the availability of similar features in Adobe products has become a major focus for investors and users. Adobe’s stock has declined 8.3 per cent this year, trailing industry peers, due in part to fears over disruption from AI.

 

The Adobe spokesperson said the company’s approach to video AI “focuses on the models as well as integration into workflows that professionals use.”

 

For Adobe investors, “a major risk/concern remains new AI based video/content creation engines that would take share from Adobe’s platform,” Jordan Klein, an analyst at Mizuho, wrote in a note last week. Adobe remains one of the “most debated” stocks in software, he added.