Adobe Announces AI Agents and MCP Integrations at Max Conference

Adobe announced comprehensive artificial intelligence updates across its Creative Cloud applications at the MAX conference held in Miami, Florida. The company shared innovations including native Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations for tools such as Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, and InDesign, alongside always-on background agents and the Firefly AI Assistant.

Among the announcements made by Adobe is the Model Context Protocol, which enables third-party AI agents from providers such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic to run natively within Creative Cloud applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects. The initial private beta releases of these native MCP integrations are planned to launch in early 2027. Deepa Subramaniam, Vice President at the company, stated that they are gathering user feedback to determine which capabilities will be offered.

The event also introduced always-on background agents capable of performing repeatedly recurring tasks in the background, which will primarily be added to the Firefly AI Assistant. Innovations such as Plan Mode, a Model Selector, Firefly Boards integration, and brand preference customization options were brought to the beta version of the Firefly Assistant. Among the announced innovations was also a prototyping tool named Builder in private beta within the Firefly application.

As part of Adobe's updates, professional color grading, object removal, and the ability to track masked subjects were added to Premiere, while these features were also brought to the mobile editing application. New visual editing and relighting features for Photoshop, along with flaw removal and eye correction tools for Lightroom, were introduced. Additionally, following the acquisition of Topaz Labs, two new visual models named Wonder 4 and ImageHDR were made available.