Software is evolving – new doors are opening up to give users access to vendors' tools without necessarily having to interact with the conventional software at all, but Adobe still believes traditional software interfaces still have a future.
We've spent the last couple of decades building a habit of opening a specific app to complete our desired task, but as expectations have grown, so has application complexity – Adobe's software has long been associated with creative professionals, but its apps have often been daunting for more casual users.
From the outside, Adobe looks to be one of the earlier companies actively exploring this shift with a clear willingness to open itself up to agentic AI and MCP. But while the company is heading in a direction of conversational interfaces, it's not leaving its traditional software routes behind.
Do creative pros still need the full app experience?
Speaking exclusively to TechRadar Pro at Adobe Max, Senior Product Director for Adobe Agentic Zorana Gee explained that while emerging AI tools is making the company's tools more accessible to more users, creators will still need different levels of control depending on what they're trying to achieve.
"I think it depends on who you talk to," Gee said when asked whether software is becoming less of a UI-centric destination and more of an invisible layer. "We see people who are still really wanting knobs and controls to change things."
But at the other end of the spectrum, other users might not have the time or expertise to learn complicated applications, so describing what they need and making less advanced changes might suffice.
During a separate fireside chat with the media, Product Marketing VP Deepa Subramaniam explained how the company is increasingly separating its capabilities from the interfaces traditionally used to access them. For many users now, the first point of entry has become their chosen chatbot or AI agents.
From there, users can choose to move into one of the Creative Cloud apps, where Adobe's own Creative Agent can help bridge some of the learning gaps typically involved by offering a more conversational interface.
But rather than forcing users to adopt Adobe's own AI assistant, the company is ready to open the doors and allow new ways of working, like AI agents, to be the point of interaction with its tools.
"We're breaking down silos and walls in terms of domain expertise and domain opportunities, and that's happening all the way to the core of how we build products," Gee added.
For Adobe, that represents a significant change from the traditional software model, but it's already a familiar conversation that we're having away from software. Countless studies have already pointed toward companies having to redefine a new way of working rather than plastering AI on top of existing processes, and Adobe's readiness to reconsider its longstanding software strategy is an extension of this.
Software isn't becoming less relevant
The prospect of controlling apps through natural language is becoming more of a reality, and barriers to entry are already being broken, but Gee was cautious about suggesting that those will totally replace traditional software.
"Being more descriptive and being able to articulate verbally the things that you want is definitely a reality," she said, stressing that the transition from traditional input to conversational won't stop at 100% – it'll likely stop much sooner, at a point where both types of input can coexist.
"Will it be 100%? I think it's unlikely or maybe it's a slow progression."
"Words are hard, communication is hard," she said, and that's an important distinction for pros. For example, a photographer adjusting a particular aspect of an image might want to make a precise fine-tune change that a text prompt could misinterpret or overestimate.
Gee also admitted that Adobe is still working out how far its integrations and evolutions should go, and that it's navigating these changes through experimentation together with a community of customers who are helping to shape tools based on what really works.
Is Adobe using Firefly as the front for its evolving software strategy?
Adobe's flagship apps are highly capable, but that's led to the steep learning curve often associated with apps like Photoshop and Premiere. Firefly serves as a different starting point, shoehorning some of the most in-demand tools and controls across many of the Creative Cloud apps into an AI-first interface.
Even pros at the top of their game may struggle to work across disciplines – Gee gave an example of a highly-skilled Photoshop user wanting (and struggling) to use motion graphic tools in After Effects.
All in all, Gee sees AI-assisted design as both "lowering the floor and raising the ceiling at the same time."
But finding a simple way to integrate AI can be complex – I wanted to know how users can make the best model choice when they're faced with so many options. Firefly supports multiple models from different vendors (the company just announced a deeper collaboration with Google to make Gemini Omni, Veo and Nano Banana more widely available in its apps), but expecting every end user to understand the pros and cons of each and make a selection defeats the purpose of adding AI in the first place.
It's another area where Adobe's desire to add precision, control and simplicity in one hit is clear. "The agent will always help if they understand the intent," Gee said, but if users have a preference, they can still opt for one that suits their budget or output needs.
"We like transparency, but we also like control," Gee added.
Where does this leave the software industry?
It's clear that AI's enabling Adobe to accommodate a wider range of users, including many who will have previously been turned about by the complexity of its advanced tools.
And that's probably the essence of it – software vendors are having to become less prescriptive about how people interact with their tools, while AI creates new entry points for new demographics of users.
In some ways, it feels like the Firefly environment is being used as an experiment for the company to determine, together with its users, what the next chapter of software looks like.
But while AI agents become increasingly capable of navigating software on our behalves, and vendors start putting these tools closer to our agents, it doesn't mean we're set to see the end of software. For Adobe, it's about a future where opening an app is a choice rather than a necessity, and the next challenge lies in making its tools accessible through as many doors as possible without compromising on the depth and precision that made them what they are in the first place.
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