> The amount of people who can edit photo's is now basically unlimited. That's thanks to generative AI.
It's also available at zero cost, thanks to the ecosystem around Stable Diffusion.
You probably know the meme that gets parroted randomly about OpenAI needing a moat; well, what's Adobe's moat, now that this exists?
Adobe's second moat is PDF. And it builds upon their imaging moat because companies want their product boxes to be sharp and with accurate colors, so there is an entire industry built around PDF-based print and cut and glue manufacturing.
So whether or not they throw an AI bone to the kids is probably irrelevant to their bottom line. My guess would be that Adobe added those AI features mainly to make their company look more sexy to potential future hires.
But yeah, for gamedev Adobe Photoshop doesn't have that much benefit over specialized tools like Substance Painter .. oh wait, they recently bought that company ;)
With Firefly they offer a tool an art agency can use daily without having to worry about hidden legal implications of using AI...
Given this, competitors need to be meaningfully better, not just equivalent or somewhat better. Adobe is still in the position to be the go to product suite for creative professionals.
Although this is debatable, lets accept it for the sake of argument that adobe has no moat.
If this is the case, this may be bad for adobe, but it is amazing for the design world. Producing more art for cheaper is real value.
And we may not know who specifically will capture that value, but it is undeniably value none the less that will go somewhere. That still benefits the economy as a whole, even if we can't guess which AI startup will win the race.
Except that if art production becomes too easy, the prices go down, and the only party benefiting is the consumer/customer.
Though it tends to disappear into effects that are taken for granted.
Like the improvement in mobile phone quality since 1990.
Just like how easy access to music through Spotify may make us appreciate music less than if we have to actually put a vinyl record on, easily accessed art may also reduce our perceived appreciation.
Businesses may exist and be necessary to serve the consumer. But they are not valuable in and of themselves.
One possible outcome is that the entire economy benefits without any AI startup winning — even if Stability AI goes under for whatever reason, the various Stable Diffusion models are still out there getting used to make pictures.
The moat memo misses the truth that google knows: you need existing customers. Ideally paying customers.
Firefly has doesn’t have a moat, it has a well. It has a way to sustain and fund development and growth and servers. That’s why google doesn’t need a moat. They have the funds to take on anyone, and probably win.