• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ 

2

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises

3

Current price of oil as of May 19, 2026

1

Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ 

2

The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises

3

Current price of oil as of May 19, 2026
TechPoint Cloud

Adobe Seeks Respect for New Artificial Intelligence Tech

Barb Darrow
By
Barb Darrow
Barb Darrow
Down Arrow Button Icon
Barb Darrow
By
Barb Darrow
Barb Darrow
Down Arrow Button Icon
November 2, 2016, 8:44 AM ET
Adobe Systems

Add Adobe Systems to the list of software companies proclaiming themselves to be artificial intelligence powers. It’s in august company: IBM (IBM), Microsoft, Salesforce (CRM) are all wrapping themselves in the artificial intelligence (aka AI) mantle.

On Wednesday, Adobe (ADBE) will show off Sensei, an array of AI technology that it is already adding to software applications for creating and publishing documents, and for analyzing and tracking web and mobile application performance. “Sensei” is the Japanese term for a respected teacher or leader.

Adobe founded in 1982, is a venerable force in the creative software world—it’s behind familiar tools including the Portable Document Format (PDF) used to format and distribute professional-looking documents; Photoshop for editing photographs; Illustrator for creating graphics; and InDesign for creating professional-looking documents for print or online.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company is also a power in web analytics—counting and assessing page views and unique views for online sites—in part due to its acquisition of Omniture seven years ago. In recent years its products have been bundled into the Adobe Creative Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Document Cloud brands.

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter

Adobe chief technology officer Abhay Parasnis described Sensei as a “unified framework” or a set of services to be delivered across its products where applicable. Some of these capabilities are already available and others will be demonstrated Tuesday at the Adobe Max technology conference in San Diego.

For example, in the company’s current version of the Premier Pro video editing application, a “Morph Cut” feature analyzes the content of a movie or video, and assesses what type of content it is—an action scene or a closeup of a face. Then, it decides what the most appropriate editing effect is for that clip. That feature will now crop up, as part of Sensei, in other Adobe cloud services where it might be useful, he said.

Ditto the creepily-named “Face Aware Liquify” feature in Photoshop Lightroom 6, which lets an editor tweak facial images easily without screwing up the rest of the image. Part of what gives Adobe an advantage is the sheer number of images and documents it has worked on over the years.

Adobe says it also can bring more smarts to document search based on its publishing and analytics experience.

For more on Adobe, read: Microsoft and Adobe ink cloud pact

“In documents today, the state of the art is searching based on file or author names. We have services in Sensei that let you ask a simple question to find all the white papers with content similar to what you’re writing now. What is the sentiment analysis? Is this document positive? It will analyze the content of the document, the writing style,” he said.

Sensei, Adobe says, brings together AI and machine learning that can be applied to image matching across multiple millions of images; and to understanding the meaning and context of documents. Machine learning is a subset of AI that pores over tons of data (the more the better) to detect patterns and present results in a visual way. In this field, more is more, when it comes to data and Parasnis said Adobe has gathered trillions of data points from its analytics and image work.

Adobe runs this technology in its own data center but also uses Amazon (AMZN) Amazon Web Services and, more recently, the company inked a deal to use Microsoft Azure cloud services as well.

Paranis said just as Adobe of yore provided applications for both the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft (MSFT)Windows operating systems (and subsequently Apple (AAPL) iOS and Android mobile devices) it now seeks to be cloud-agnostic. “We focus on the applications and abstract out what they run on ,” he said.

For more on AI watch:

Constellation Research principal analyst Alan Lepofsky said he is impressed because Adobe is not just building another AI platform.

“Instead they are focusing on how machine learning can be applied to specific use cases of its Creative Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Document Cloud. I like that they are focusing on their domain expertise and weigh what can help customers. It’s also interesting that a lot of this is already built today and will evolve with the partnership announced with Microsoft Azure.”

 

Note: This story was updated to correct the name of Photoshop Lightroom, and Adobe’s claim that it has acumulated trillions, not billions, of data points from its past work.

 

 

 

 

About the Author
Barb Darrow
By Barb Darrow
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Tech

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Tech

cohen
Startups & VentureAI agents
Meet the brothers who turned a homegrown AI agent into a $12 million bet on the future of work — in six weeks
By Nick LichtenbergMay 20, 2026
22 minutes ago
Current price of Ethereum for May 20, 2026
Personal FinanceEthereum
Current price of Ethereum for May 20, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerMay 20, 2026
27 minutes ago
microsoft
AIProductivity
America’s new AI map shows something surprising: ‘A lot of normal people are adopting AI’
By Nick LichtenbergMay 20, 2026
32 minutes ago
Variational co-founders Edward Yu and Lucas Schuermann pose for a picture
CryptoCryptocurrency
Variational raises $50 million Series A to bring liquidity from traditional markets to blockchain rails
By Jack KubinecMay 20, 2026
1 hour ago
trader
CommentarySoftware
The 50-year-old law that governed every software company just broke. Here’s what replaces it
By Martin Casado and Abhishek NagarajMay 20, 2026
2 hours ago
Exclusive: Circle cofounder raises $30 million for Series A ‘AI-native bank’ Catena Labs
CryptoVenture Capital
Exclusive: Circle cofounder raises $30 million for Series A ‘AI-native bank’ Catena Labs
By Ben WeissMay 20, 2026
2 hours ago

Most Popular

Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ 
Workplace Culture
Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ 
By Preston ForeMay 19, 2026
17 hours ago
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
Politics
The Bezos family just donated $100 million to help achieve one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top campaign promises
By Jake AngeloMay 12, 2026
8 days ago
Current price of oil as of May 19, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of May 19, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerMay 19, 2026
1 day ago
Meet a 21-year-old community college student who's going to China as the first American woman welder in the trades Olympics
Future of Work
Meet a 21-year-old community college student who's going to China as the first American woman welder in the trades Olympics
By Mike Householder and The Associated PressMay 17, 2026
3 days ago
Employers are quietly pausing 401(k) matches again. The last time this happened was the 2008 recession and Covid
Personal Finance
Employers are quietly pausing 401(k) matches again. The last time this happened was the 2008 recession and Covid
By Courtney Vinopal and HR BrewMay 18, 2026
2 days ago
Spirit Airlines apologizes to all the Americans who can't afford any summer vacation flights as it shuts down
Travel & Leisure
Spirit Airlines apologizes to all the Americans who can't afford any summer vacation flights as it shuts down
By Rio Yamat and The Associated PressMay 18, 2026
2 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.