Adobe is preparing to make AI agents a more hands-on part of creative work. The company previewed ways for outside agents to edit Creative Cloud files, for Firefly AI Assistant to plan and carry out more tasks, and for recurring jobs to run in the background.
Outside agents could work directly in creative projects
Adobe previewed local Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations for Creative Cloud. They are intended to let people choose between Adobe’s assistants and third-party agents they already use, including tools from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
Those external agents could work locally with Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects. They would be able to make direct changes to native project files on a user’s computer, while keeping the components editable. Layers, vectors, bins, and sequences would remain available for people to refine after an agent has done its work.
The integrations could also connect creative work with other MCP-capable tools. One example Adobe described is an agent gathering reference documents from Google Docs, using them to build a project in Adobe software, then sharing the result with colleagues or clients in Slack.
The local integrations are not available yet. Adobe says a private beta is planned for early 2027, so the preview outlines a possible workflow rather than a feature people can use today.
Background agents would handle recurring work
Adobe also previewed “Always-on” agents designed to keep working on assigned tasks in the background. A user could set a recurring job, such as organizing new assets, checking quality, or preparing content, then review the agent’s plan and approve its final output.
For social media work, for example, an agent could turn incoming images into promotional graphics for different channels. A person could return to review the options and choose which ones to publish. That shifts the agent’s role from responding to a single request to producing work continuously for later review.
Adobe has not given a launch date for this preview. It says the feature will arrive in Firefly AI Assistant first. The plan-and-approve approach described by Adobe gives people a review point, while still allowing repetitive preparation to happen without constant attention.
Firefly adds planning and creative controls
Firefly AI Assistant is also getting new controls. Plan Mode will let users review, edit, and approve an agent’s plan before it begins a task. A Model Selector will let them pick an AI model for a project or leave the choice to automatic selection based on the results needed.
The assistant is gaining an integration with Firefly Boards, along with options to set preferred formats, colors, brand guidelines, characters, and products. Users can choose to apply those preferences across projects, which could help keep repeated creative work aligned with a set of choices.
Adobe’s creative agent has already been added to Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, and Frame.io since it was introduced earlier this year. The latest updates extend its role in video editing, with the assistant able to track masked subjects through a frame and apply effects or adjust color and exposure across clip sequences in Premiere.
Adobe’s direction puts agents at the center
The agent is also coming to Adobe’s Premiere mobile editing app, where users will be able to make conversational video edits while on the go. Taken together, the desktop and mobile updates point toward a workflow in which people can describe a goal, let an agent make changes, and then continue editing the result themselves.
That direction follows a strategy described by creativity head David Wadhwani in April. He said the Adobe creative agent would eventually appear “in virtually everything we develop.” The newly previewed third-party access and Firefly upgrades reflect both sides of that approach: Adobe is building its own assistants while also opening creative apps to other agents.
For creators, the practical question is how much work to delegate and how to keep control of the result. Adobe’s previews emphasize editable projects, adjustable plans, and approval steps, while leaving the timing of several features uncertain. The company is signaling that agents will become part of its creative tools, but the announced workflows will take time to reach users.