Why it Matters
The Bifurcation of Design
This announcement accelerates a dramatic bifurcation in the creative market, splitting the definition of ‘design work’ into two distinct streams: Identity Creation and Asset Scaling.
Historically, professional designers handled both the creation of brand identity and the repetitive production of assets. This integration demonstrated the speed of the shift, where creative professionals will focus on high-level brand governance and ‘rule-setting’ using native tools (that is, the creation of an organisation’s identity in the market), while the wider organisation (sales, marketing, HR) leverages workflows and AI to scale asset production and distribution that strictly follow the brand identity.
Democratising Professional Power
By embedding these tools in ChatGPT, Adobe is removing the ‘interface barrier’. Adobe’s products – such as Photoshop – are complex, with arguably the most comprehensive set of professional creative design capabilities in the market. With natural language instructions, this complexity is masked to some extent, allowing users to speed up the development. This does not replace professional creative skills, but it does allow for the scaling up and out of asset creation.
Adobe Express as the ‘Scaling Engine’
Adobe Express is being positioned as the execution layer for the enterprise. Unlike static templates, the Adobe Express integration allows for iterative, conversational editing while respecting layer structures and brand assets. This ensures that a sales representative generating a brochure in ChatGPT utilises approved brand elements, mitigating the risk of ‘breaking’ the brand, which is a common failure point with purely generative image models.
The Strategic Role of MCP: The adoption of MCP is the technical enabler for this strategy, allowing Adobe to build its ‘skills’ once and have them universally understood by any MCP-compliant AI client. This effectively turns Adobe’s entire suite into a set of API-callable ‘skills’ that can be embedded into any workflow.
Who’s Impacted
- Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs): Look to decentralise routine content creation (e.g., social posts, internal docs) to specific business units, reducing bottlenecks in the creative department and increasing speed-to-market.
- Creative Directors and Design Teams: Will see their role evolve from ‘pixel pushers’ to ‘brand governors’. Their focus will shift to defining the templates and guardrails that the AI agents utilise, ensuring the decentralised work remains on-brand.
- Chief Information Officers (CIOs): Evaluate the security implications of third party platforms accessing corporate assets via MCP. While the protocol allows for secure connections, new governance policies regarding data privacy and tool interoperability will be required.
- General Workforce: Employees without design skills now have immediate access to professional-grade editing and document tools, allowing for self-service on tasks that previously required a ticket to the design team.
Next Steps
- Evaluate Governance: Review your organisation’s policies on using third party AI interfaces like ChatGPT for corporate assets, specifically addressing the new capabilities of file upload and modification via Adobe agents.
- Pilot ‘Conversational Creation’: Select a non-creative team (e.g., HR or sales) to pilot the Adobe Express integration in ChatGPT for routine assets (newsletters, invites) to measure efficiency gains versus traditional workflows.
