New Adobe Firefly video updates are here to bring your AI-generated videos to the next level and to potentially keep the company competitive in the crowded AI market. You'll be able to add sound effects to your Firefly AI videos, thanks to a beta release of a new AI tool rolling out now, the company announced Thursday. It's the second major tech company to release such capabilities, following Google's Veo 3 launch in May.
There are also a couple of other changes coming to Firefly video, including new outside AI models you can use through Firefly and new prompting features and presets. A new composition reference tool lets you upload content, and Firefly will use your references and mimic a video's motions or an image's layout without needing to describe every detail in your prompt. Keyframe cropping will help you resize content, and there are new style presets, including anime, vector art, and black and white.
It wasn't until recently that AI-generated videos could also have sound. Adobe first teased this audio feature when it was just a research concept in development at last year's Adobe Max. After a warm reception from the live audience, the company continued work on the tool, which led to this week's beta release. But Adobe's AI audio abilities are not the same as Veo 3's, which made a splash at this spring's I/O conference. There are some key differences between the programs that will affect the content you generate.
Here's what you need to know about Firefly's new audible AI videos and how they stack up to Google. For more, check out how to use Photoshop AI and the new Firefly mobile apps.
Creating AI audio in Firefly vs. Veo 3
To create AI videos with sound in Firefly, start in your normal Firefly prompting window. Once you have a video you like, hover over the video and click the icon in the upper right corner that says Generate sound effects. This will open a new browser tab where you can generate AI audio.
This is an example of the set-up you use when generating sound effects through Adobe Firefly. Screenshot by Katelyn Chedraoui/CNET
One of the biggest differences between Firefly and Veo 3 is the type of AI audio you're able to create. The AI audio you can generate through Firefly is the kind of audio that could be created by a foley artist, like sound effects and impact noises. That doesn't include dialogue, though. Each prompt generates four variations of audio clips, usually 8 seconds long each. You can record yourself making the sound effects and upload that as part of your prompt, a unique option.
For example, if you wanted to give your AI monster a menacing roar, you could record yourself growling, and Firefly will give you four variations of AI-ified audio that match your general cadence. But you can't record yourself saying, "You will never escape my evil lair!" and have those words generated by Firefly. That's different than Veo 3, which can generate audio on its own or from a script you provide in your prompt. Adobe has new, separate AI avatar tool in beta for dialogue creation.
Another difference is that in Firefly, you have to manually synchronize your AI audio to your video clips. People familiar with creating in Premiere Pro will recognize the similar set-up, where you can drag and drop audio clips to wherever you want them to play in the timeline. But for folks who don't need or want that kind of manual, hands-on control, Veo 3's automatically matching will take a lot of the work out of creating AI videos.
Other differences between Adobe and Google
Adobe's AI video generator might not have the same level of audio capabilities as Veo 3, but it does have other things going for it. Firefly lets you access 15 different AI models from popular AI companies like Runway, Luma, Pika and, yes, even Google's Veo 3. Adobe is adding a couple of new outside models to Firefly app roster for you to choose from, including Moonvalley's "clean AI" model Marey, Pika 2.2 and Luma AI's Ray 2.
This is important because Adobe's AI policy says it doesn't train its AI models on customer content, and it requires all its partner models to agree to this "do not train" commitment. So if you're worried about maintaining some level of data privacy while using AI tools, generating videos in Adobe comes with a stronger policy than many other AI programs.
There's also a small price difference between the two. Adobe Firefly plans begin at $10 per month, with more expensive plans offering additional generation credits. You might have some Firefly credits already, depending on what Adobe plan you're currently subscribed to. Google recently added access to a fast version of Veo 3 to its $20 per month Google AI Pro plan -- a chance for significant savings, since the regular Veo 3 is paywalled to the $250 Google AI Ultra plan.
For more, check out the first AI feature in Premiere Pro and Adobe's new Indigo camera app.