IBM Sees Productivity Boost Using Adobe’s Generative AI Tools
International Business Machines (IBM) announced on Wednesday that it has seen significant improvements in productivity through the initial testing of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools from Adobe.
IBM has been utilizing Adobe’s tools, which have the capability to generate images based on text prompts, to aid in their marketing campaigns. This marks an early testing phase for Adobe’s strategy of developing AI systems trained on its own proprietary data, providing legal guarantees against potential lawsuits. The company hopes this strategy will attract large businesses.
Billy Seabrook, the global chief design officer for IBM’s consulting arm, revealed that the 1,600 designers in his unit have been employing Adobe’s tools to quickly generate ideas and create different variants of them for various aspects of their marketing campaigns.
“What typically would take us two weeks for an end-to-end cycle, we’ve gotten down to two days,” stated Seabrook in an interview with Reuters.
In general, IBM predicts a ten-fold increase in designers’ productivity, allowing them to allocate more time to brainstorming and creating storyboards, rather than generating minor design variations.
Seabrook acknowledged that in the short term, the impact on employment in the design industry is likely to be using existing teams to handle more work.
“There’s typically a rule of prioritization of what big bets you are going to go after and what staff you’re going to put towards a problem. Theoretically, you’re opening up more headroom to focus on some of those other problems,” he explained.
The long-term impact on employment remains uncertain. However, recent survey data from IBM indicates that most business leaders consider designers to be more essential than ever.
“They have to be almost the tastemakers and quality checkers of the output of the generative AI, as well as a little bit of the empathy in the room that helps train and fine-tune and curate that AI,” Seabrook emphasized.
Nevertheless, Seabrook revealed that “everyone agrees there are going to be fewer jobs” based on other parts of the survey data. IBM is still awaiting the unfolding of the situation to determine the true impact.
Analyst comment
Positive news: IBM Sees Productivity Boost Using Adobe’s Generative AI Tools. IBM reports significant improvements in productivity using Adobe’s AI tools for marketing. IBM predicts a ten-fold increase in designer productivity, allowing more time for creativity. The short-term impact may be using existing teams for more work, but long-term employment impact remains uncertain as designers are considered essential.
