Adobe, stop trying to replace the part we actually love!

Generate rotating vectors. Generate images. Generate, generate, generate.

And every time I see it, I have the same thought:

Why are you're trying to automate the very reason I became a designer?

Don't get me wrong, I love good creative tools. I love that technology gives me the freedom to make anything I want (like my custom built Notion workspace and project management tool).

Photoshop's Generative Expand has saved me hours! Removing an awkward object from the background of a photo that would have taken ten minutes to clone out manually? Brilliant. Extending the edge of an image to fit a social media crop? Even better.

Those features remove friction. They don't remove creativity.

That's the difference.

Software like Adobe's helped us spend less time on repetitive tasks so we could spend more time thinking, experimenting and making.

Lately, though, it feels like the focus has shifted.

Instead of asking, "How can we help creatives create?" the question seems to be, "How can we generate the creative part for them?"

That's a very different philosophy.

Creativity isn't the bottleneck

One of the newest additions to Adobe's AI ecosystem is Firefly Boards, a collaborative canvas designed for generating and arranging AI-created images and ideas.

I'm sure it will find an audience.

Advertising agencies creating early concept boards? Great.

Marketing teams pitching campaign directions? Makes sense.

Clients who struggle to visualise an idea? Potentially, but it could be a slippery slope.

But I worry when these tools are presented as the default starting point for creativity itself.

Because creativity is more than just producing an image.

It's learning how to make one, choosing what goes in it and why it's there.

AI may accidentally skip the part that teaches you how to be a good designer. This is what concerns me most for younger designers entering the industry.

The part AI accidentally skips

I have recently taken up painting, so I had more hobbies off a computer. I thought I could use my skills to pre-design the painting I had in my head - in Adobe Illustrator.

Not because I wanted a finished digital artwork, but because it was the fastest way I could test the composition, colours and layout before I painted it on canvas.

At the next meeting when I showed the mockup to my creative lunch group crew, someone said something that genuinely surprised me.

"But that digital version was beautiful. Isn't that the finished artwork?"

I realised we were looking at the same image very differently.

They saw an outcome. I saw the practice I hadn't done yet. For me, the value wasn't the digital mockup.

The value was spending hours with a paintbrush, learning something I couldn't learn from a screen.

Making an image wasn't the goal, the process was. I suspect many creatives feel exactly the same way.

Keep AI where it's brilliant

I'm not arguing that AI doesn't belong in creative software. Quite the opposite. I want more of it.

Just in the right places.

Good technology removes friction so we can spend more time doing the things that require judgement, curiosity and creativity.

Remove distracting objects. Extend backgrounds. Speed up masking. Help me organise files. Suggest accessibility improvements. Generate code.

Remove the boring bits.

Those are wonderful uses of AI because they leave the creative decisions to the human.

What worries me is when the software starts suggesting that the 'thinking' itself is optional.

AI is good, I don't think it belongs at every stage of creative work. Because the goal of creative work isn't always efficiency. Sometimes the sketch (or the doing) is where the breakthrough happens.

Sometimes the painting matters because you painted it with your own hands.

I just want AI that assists creativity, rather than attempting to replace it, and that's a future I'd happily subscribe to.

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