Adobe launches MCP, adds AI tools to Photoshop, Premiere

Adobe used its MAX conference in Miami to roll out a wave of AI features across Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator and InDesign, while expanding its Firefly creative app and releasing a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini tap into Adobe’s tools.

Firefly is adding a Figma-like prototyping tool called Builder, now in private beta, along with a tool for generating on-brand charts and an image editor that can change part of a picture without altering the rest. A new AI video tool will let users assemble video from clips, images and sound effects, and Adobe says its agent will now run proactively, staying aware of a user’s work so it has more context for any action — including quick fixes like removing a background or generating a thumbnail.

Beyond Firefly, Photoshop is getting a relighting feature and generative-style sliders; Premiere adds a professional color-grading system and a video object-removal tool; and Lightroom gains fixes for blinking eyes and blemishes. Topaz Labs, one of Adobe’s newer acquisitions, is releasing two image models of its own — Wonder 4, for upscaling and denoising, and ImageHDR, which converts standard images into HDR — alongside the third-party models Adobe already licenses from companies including Google, Runway, ElevenLabs and OpenAI.

Adobe already supports ChatGPT and Claude integrations that expose some product functions; the new local MCP server widens that access across Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere. “We are still figuring out where and when and how to draw the line,” Adobe vice president Deepa Subramaniam told TechCrunch, adding that the company plans to keep expanding what the MCP endpoint can reach based on how people actually use it, saying it has no interest in limiting what the endpoint exposes. Not everyone sees the standard as neutral: Figma co-founder Dylan Field said at an event in India last month that MCP isn’t a perfect standard and tends to benefit frontier AI labs more than the companies that adopt it.

Why it matters

By opening its creative tools to outside chatbots just as it keeps building its own agents, Adobe is betting it can stay the default workspace for creative work even as more of that work gets routed through someone else’s AI assistant.