What changes with the third-party agent
At Adobe MAX in Miami, Adobe presented an opening of Creative Cloud to AI agents developed by other companies. According to IT之家, the feature is based on local access to the Model Context Protocol (MCP): agents from companies such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic can operate directly on the Adobe software installed on the user's computer—namely Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects—and make changes to native project files saved locally.
The new development therefore does not concern a simple additional assistant within the applications, but the possibility of entrusting editing tasks to systems outside the Adobe ecosystem. This expands the options for those already using AI agents in other contexts, but also introduces the need to verify how access, permissions and changes to local files are managed.
The work remains editable, and the project can span multiple applications
Adobe indicated that the agent's intervention does not make the work final: layers, vector graphics, material panels and sequences remain editable, so the user can regain control of the project at any time. If the agent is also connected to other MCP-compatible tools, it can furthermore coordinate a workflow spanning multiple applications.
The example provided by the company involves extracting reference material from Google Docs, creating the project with Adobe software and sending the result to colleagues or clients via Slack. This is a scenario illustrated by Adobe, not an already available feature: local access via MCP is not yet open, and the company plans a private test in early 2027.
Background agents and new features for Firefly
Adobe also showed AI agents capable of working in the background on recurring tasks, such as organizing newly arrived material, performing periodic quality checks or preparing content. The user assigns the task, reviews the agent's work plan and approves the final result. In the company's example, an agent transforms the images received into materials suited to different social platforms; the user checks once a day and chooses what to publish. For this feature, Adobe did not announce a test date and specified that it will initially be supported by Firefly AI Assistant.
The beta version of Firefly AI Assistant, based on Adobe's creative agent technology, is receiving several additions: a planning mode that allows users to review, edit and approve the agent's plan before it starts; a model selector for manually specifying the AI model or letting the system choose it based on the task; integration with Firefly Boards and the ability to set preferred file formats, colors, brand rules, characters and products, applying them automatically to all projects.
What remains to be verified
The available information describes announcements and demonstrations, not products that are already usable. The technical requirements for local access via MCP, the authorization methods for external agents, the pricing plans involved and the security measures planned are not known. The 2027 date concerns only the announced start of the private test, while no timeline is available for background agents. It therefore remains to be seen how Adobe will translate these features into tools available to users and with what operational limits.
