According to TechCrunch, Adobe announced on Wednesday that it is adding features from Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat directly into OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This lets users ask the chatbot to perform tasks like editing specific parts of an image, removing backgrounds, merging PDFs, or animating design elements. The features are available globally on ChatGPT’s desktop, web, and iOS apps, though on Android, only Express is supported for now, with Photoshop and Acrobat coming soon. If a user hits a wall in ChatGPT, they can jump directly into the native Adobe apps to finish the job. This follows Adobe’s slew of AI releases this year, including AI assistants for Express and Photoshop and a teased cross-app assistant called Project Moonlight.
The Adobe-Everywhere Strategy
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just about adding a cool feature to a chatbot. It’s a strategic land grab. Adobe is essentially planting its flag inside the most popular AI interface on the planet. The goal is obvious: user acquisition. They’re betting that someone who’s never opened Photoshop will try a simple “remove the background from this photo” command in ChatGPT, get a decent result, and think, “Huh, maybe this Adobe stuff is useful.” It’s a classic try-before-you-buy funnel, but with an AI middleman. And it’s a sharp pivot from the walled-garden approach of the past.
The Crowded ChatGPT Ecosystem
But there’s a catch. OpenAI started this whole “GPTs” third-party app store in October, and Adobe is far from the only player. Canva is already in there for design. So now, inside the same ChatGPT interface, a user will have a choice: edit an image with Adobe’s tools or with Canva’s. If you’re not already loyal to one ecosystem, what decides it? Ease of use? Quality of the one-click result? This is where the real battle shifts. It’s no longer just about your app’s standalone features; it’s about how well your AI *agent* performs inside ChatGPT. The integration has to be seamless and stupidly simple, or users will just try the next option in the list.
The Revenue Question
TechCrunch notes it’s unclear if there’s a revenue-sharing deal between OpenAI and Adobe. That’s a massive, unanswered question. Is Adobe paying for placement? Is OpenAI taking a cut of any eventual subscription that starts in ChatGPT? Or is this purely a user-growth play for Adobe, with the hope that free usage in ChatGPT leads to paid seats in Creative Cloud? I think the latter is more likely, at least initially. Adobe’s core business is still its massive subscription revenue. Getting more people into the funnel, even through a side door, is probably worth whatever cost or data-sharing agreement they’ve worked out. But long-term, these partnerships always get renegotiated when one side starts driving disproportionate value.
A New Kind of Workflow
Basically, this signals a new hybrid workflow. You start with a natural language prompt in ChatGPT. You do the broad-strokes edit or creation. Then, when you need fine-grained control or a feature the AI can’t handle, you hop over to the professional app. This “AI rough draft, human final touch” model could become standard for a lot of creative work. The risk for Adobe is that the chatbot becomes the primary interface, and their powerful, expensive apps feel like complicated backup tools. The opportunity is that they become the indispensable, high-quality backend for the AI generation. It’s a fascinating tightrope to walk. And everyone in the creative software space is now watching to see if users actually adopt it.
