In a bid to expand its services and cater to the growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, Adobe is set to introduce a subscription model that includes legal assurance against copyright infringement claims. This move comes as Adobe aims to provide business customers with access to generative AI tools, which have the ability to generate content like text or images based on user prompts, across its range of products.

Ashley Still, Senior Vice President at Adobe, revealed in an interview that the company plans to charge a flat-rate subscription fee for company-wide access to these generative AI tools. Pricing will be negotiated on an individual basis, taking into account the size of each organization. A key feature of this subscription offer is that licenses will remove watermarks from generated images. Additionally, in the event that a customer faces a copyright infringement lawsuit, Adobe has pledged to cover damages and provide assistance in court. Notably, Adobe already offers a similar service for its library of digital images known as Adobe Stock.

As the field of AI imagery continues to evolve rapidly, Adobe has positioned itself as a responsible industry player by emphasizing its commitment to offering products that neither plagiarize nor create offensive content. The company’s Firefly line of tools, which draws heavily on its own stock library, is touted as “the only commercially safe generative AI offering in the market.”

Adobe has already incorporated image-generating tools into its flagship Photoshop software and a standalone image generator. These features will also be present in the upcoming version of Adobe Express, the company’s web-based design tool, according to a statement released on Thursday. While the new enterprise licenses will impose a cap on image generation, Adobe’s Senior Vice President Ashley Still stated that it would be uncommon for regular usage to reach this cap.

With major software companies racing to integrate AI features into their existing products, the monetization aspect of such technologies remains a critical question. Recently, The Information reported that Microsoft is charging some Office 365 customers a flat fee of $100,000 per year for up to 1,000 users to test its new AI features.

Monetizing generative AI poses unique challenges due to the significant computing resources required to operate these systems effectively. Adobe’s new generative tools in Photoshop, for example, generated over 100 million images in just eight days after their release. Nonetheless, Ashley Still expressed that Adobe is not overly concerned about the associated costs of computing resources.

Anil Chakravarthy, Adobe’s President of Digital Experience, stated during an interview at the company’s annual summit in London that the pricing model for these generative AI tools will be determined by the number of users and the volume of images generated. Chakravarthy clarified that the additional charges will only apply to the generative AI component, ensuring a fair and transparent pricing structure.

In the marketplace, several startups are already capitalizing on the demand for generative AI tools. Stability AI, for instance, offers its image-generation service at a monthly rate of $149, providing customers with nearly unlimited usage. Meanwhile, competitor Midjourney offers a highest-tier plan at $60 per month.

Adobe is also incorporating its Firefly image-generation features into its marketing and analytics software, as revealed by Senior Vice President Amit Ahuja. For text-based generative AI tasks such as writing advertising language or summarizing conversations, Adobe will leverage large language models developed by other companies.