 |
|
|
|||||
Adobe will be giving its priciest subscription tier an AI-first rebrandand adding an even higher price tag. Adobes Creative Cloud All Apps subscription, which includes access to more than 20 Adobe apps, will soon be known as Creative Cloud Pro, the company announced last week. The renamed subscription plan will give users expanded access to Adobes AI-powered tools and apps, but for a price: For subscribers on an annual plan, the cost will increase from $59.99 to $69.99 monthly, or from $659.88 to $779.99 annually. Beginning on June 17, any members of Creative Cloud All Apps will be automatically opted into Creative Cloud Pro. According to Adobes announcement of the plan, Creative Cloud Pro pricing will be effective at your next renewal on or after June 17. Currently, these changes are only rolling out in North America. This follows better-than-expected first quarter 2025 financial results for the software company, which reported a record revenue of $5.71 billion, equal to 10% year-over-year growth. Still, Adobe’s shares dropped after the report, as several experts and investors noted concerns that the company might be falling behind competitors with its AI efforts. Creative Cloud Pro appears to be the next step for Adobe to monetize its newly robust suite of AI tools by making them a mandatory investment for the companys most dedicated users, even as it rolls out made without generative AI image labels. Heres what to know about the new plan. Whats new on Creative Cloud Pro? To start, Creative Cloud Pro comes with all of the features that were included under the Creative Cloud All Apps umbrella. The plan includes a portfolio of more than 30,000 fonts, unlimited Creative Cloud libraries, millions of stock photos and videos, and 100 gigabytes of cloud storage. In addition to these perks, the upgraded plan will include several new AI features. First, users will gain unlimited access to standard generative tools like Photoshops Generative Fill, which can essentially deepfake anything within a composition, and Lightrooms Generative Remove, which eliminates unwanted details in a photo. Creative Cloud Pro users will also have 4,000 monthly credits to use for Adobes class of premium generative features, like Premiere Pros Generative Extend, which uses AI to add frames to the beginning or end of any video. The rebranded subscription also includes the most recent Firefly app, which Adobe bills as its one-stop shop for exploration and ideation with creative AI. The app comes with Adobes new text-to-image generator Image Model 4, as well as its Firefly Video Model, which first entered public beta testing last month. Another feature called Firefly Boards allows teams to do some Pinterest-style mood board brainstorming. For any Creative Cloud Pro users who have a different AI model of choice, they can also choose to import Google Imagen 3 and Veo 2, OpenAI image generation, or Flux 1.1 Pro into Firefly. More details on Creative Cloud Pro features are available here. How much will it cost for different kinds of users? Prices are set to rise across the board for all kinds of Creative Cloud All Apps users. For rolling subscribers (those not on an annual plan), prices will rise from $89.99 to $104.99. For teams, prices will jump from $89.99 to $99.99 per month. And for student and teacher plans, renewal prices are set to increase from $34.99 to $39.99 monthly. What if I dont want to join this new plan? If youre a current Creative Cloud All Apps user but dont want to be automatically shuffled into Creative Cloud Pro, Adobe has created another subscription tier called Creative Cloud Standard. This tier is the same price as the former Creative Cloud All Apps ($54.99 per month for annual users), but it comes with a bit less value. Whereas All Apps included 1,000 monthly credits for the aforementioned standard generative features, Creative Cloud Standard only includes 25 credits. It also limits access to premium features on mobile and web apps, and, of course, does not include premium generative features or Firefly. While Adobes web page states that Creative Cloud Standard is only available to existing customers, an Adobe spokesperson clarified that new users can actually join this tier by contacting customer support. Its a trade-off that essentially means youll be paying the same amount for a subscription with fewer bonuses, but it might be the option that makes the most sense for users who have no interest in Adobes AI features. On Reddit, plenty of users have already expressed displeasure with the new plan. It’s easy to see why. Adobe is automatically upgrading subscriptions to the more expensive Creative Cloud Pro tier, a UX pattern that makes it less likely for users to opt out than if they had to make an active choice and tick a subscribe box, for instance. Both this and the Creative Cloud Standard journey for new users could be seen as dark patterns, which are UX pathways that manipulate users into taking actions that they may not have intended but are in the business interests of the company. The U.S. sued Adobe over its hard-to-cancel subscriptions last year. The goal of the automatic upgrade, in combination with the decreased appeal of the Creative Cloud Standard tier due to its reduced features, seems to be to draw more daily active users into the company’s existing AI products. That would be in close keeping with its recent focus on monetizing generative AI tools following its last earnings report, which was plagued with fears that Adobe isn’t staying ahead in the AI race. An Adobe spokesperson declined to comment on the reasoning behind the subscription tier rebrand and whether users will be personally notified before the change takes place.
Category:
E-Commerce
Google is rapidly expanding its AI search capabilities, as reflected in the announcements it made Tuesday at its Google I/O developer conference. The search giant announced the general availability of AI Mode, its chatbot-format AI search product; some changes to its AI Overviews search results; and its plans to add new visual and agentic search features this summer. Googles biggest announcement in the realm of search was the general availability of its AI Mode, a chatbot-style search interface that allows users to enter a back-and-forth with the underlying large language model to zero in on a complete and satisfying answer. AI Mode is really our most powerful version of AI search, Robby Stein, Google’s VP of Product for Search, tells Fast Company. The tool had been available as an experimental product from Google Labs. Now its a real product, available to all users and accessible within various Google apps, and as a tab within the Google mobile app. AI Mode is powered by Gemini 2.5, Googles most formidable model, which was developed by DeepMind. The model can remember a lot of data during a user interaction, and can reason its way to a responsive answer. Because of this, AI Mode can be used for more complex, multipart queries. We’re seeing this being used for the more sophisticated set of questions people have, Stein says. You have math questions, you have how-to questions, you want to compare two productslike many things that haven’t been done before, that are probably unique to you. The user gets back a conversational AI answer synthesized from a variety of sources. The main magic of the system is this new advanced modeling capability for AI Mode, something called a query fan-out where the model has learned to use Google, Stein says. It generates potentially dozens of queries off of your single question. The LLM might make data calls to the web, indexes of web data, maps and location data, product information, as well as API connections to more dynamic data such as sports scores, weather, or stock prices. New shopping tools Google also introduced some new shopping features in AI Mode that leverage the multimodal and reasoning capabilities of the Gemini 2.5 models. Google indexes millions of products, along with prices and other information. The agentic capability of the Gemini model lets AI Mode keep an eye out for a product the user wants, with the right set of desired features and below a price threshold that the user sets. The AI can then alert the user with the information, as well as a button that says buy for me. If the user clicks it the agent will complete the purchase. Google is also releasing a virtual clothing try-on function in AI Mode. The feature addresses perhaps the biggest problem with buying and selling apparel online. Its a problem that we’ve been trying to solve over the last few years, says Lilian Rincon, VP of Consumer Shopping Products. Which is this dilemma of [where] users see a product but they don’t know what that product will look like on them. Virtual Try-on lets a user upload a photo of themself, then the AI shows the user what theyd look like in any of the billions of clothing products Google indexes. The feature is powered by a new custom image generation model for fashion that understands the nuances of the human body and how various fabrics fold and bend over the body type of the user, Rincon says. Google has released Virtual Try-on as an experimental feature in Google Labs. New features coming to AI Mode this summer Google says it intends to roll out further enhancements to AI Mode over the summer. For starters, it’s adding the functionality of its previously announced Project Mariner (an AI agent prototype that works with the Chrome browser) to AI Mode. So the LLM will be able to control the users web browser to access information from websites, fill out and submit forms, and use websites to plan and book tasks. Google is going to start by enabling the AI to do things like book event tickets, make restaurant reservations, and set appointments for local services. The user can give the AI agent special instructions or conditions, such as buy tickets only if less than $100, and only if the weather (if its an outdoor event) forecast looks good. The AI will not only find the best ticket prices to a show, but will also submit the data needed to buy the ticket for the user. (The user gets final sign-off, of course.) Google will be adding a new deep search function in which the model might access, and reason about, hundreds of online, indexed, or AI data sources. The model might spend several minutes thinking through the completeness of its answer, and perhaps make additional data queries. The end result is a comprehensive research report on a given topic. At last years I/O, Google revealed its Project Astra, a prototype of a universal AI assistant that can see, hear, and reason, and converse with the user, out loud, in real time. The assistant taps into search in several ways. A user could show the assistant an object in front of the phone camera and ask for more information about it, which the agent would get from the web. Or the assistant might be shown a recipe, and help the user shop for the ingredients. Google also plans to launch enhanced personalization features to AI search as a way of delivering more relevant search results. The best version of search is one that knows you well, Stein says. For example, AI Mode and AI Overviews soon might consult a users search history to use past preferences to inform the content of current queries. Thats not all. Google also intends to consult user data from other Google services, including Gmail, to inform searches, subject to user opt-in. Finally, the company will add data visualizations to search results, which it believes will help users draw meaning from data returned in search results. It will start by modeling sports and financial data this summer, Stein says. AI Overviews now reaches almost all Google users AI Overviews is Googles original AI search experience. For some types of search queries, users see an AI-generated narrative summary of information synthesized from various web documents and Googles information graphs. Stein says Google is now making AI Overviews available to 95 more countries and territories, bringing the total to around 200, and in 40 languages. Google claims that AI Overviews, its generative AI search experience, now has 1.5 billion users. Where search is concerned, Google is a victim of the inventors dilemma. It built a massive business placing ads around its search results, so it has a good reason to keep optimizing and improving that experience, rather than pivoting toward new AI-based search, which nobody has reliably monetized with ads yet. Indeed Googles core experience still consists of relatively short queries and results consisting of ranked websites and an assortment of Google-owned content. But development of AI search products and functions seems to be accelerating. Google is protecting its cash cow (traditiona search with ads) while keeping pace with the chatbot search experiences offered by newcomers like OpenAIs ChatGPT. But its more than that. Googles VP and Head of Search Liz Reid suggests that we may be looking at the future of Google Searchfull stop. I think one of the things that’s very exciting with AI Mode is not just that it is our cutting-edge AI search, but it becomes a glimpse of what we think can be more broadly available, Reid tells Fast Company. And so our current belief is that we’re going to take the things that work really well in AI Mode and bring them right to the core of search and AI Overviews.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and health officials in several states are investigating a multistate Salmonella infection outbreak linked to whole cucumbers grown in Florida and shipped around the country. As a result of the ongoing investigation, health officials have recalled whole cucumbers grown by Bedner Growers Inc. and distributed by Fresh Start Produce Inc. between April 29, 2025, and May 19, 2025. As of Monday, 26 people have been infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella. Cases have been reported in 15 states. Nine people have been hospitalized; no deaths have been reported. Several people reported feeling ill after being on cruises that departed from Florida. Which products were impacted? The outbreak is linked to whole, nonorganic varieties. Cucumbers may have been sold individually or in smaller packages and may be within shelf life for the rest of this week. Cucumbers were distributed to stores, restaurants, and other facilities. The FDA is working to determine where potentially contaminated products were distributed. Businesses that purchased whole cucumbers grown by Bedner Growers Inc. and distributed by Fresh Start Produce Inc. between April 29 and May 19 should not sell or serve them and should notify their customers of the potential health concern, health officials said. Illnesses were reported in the following states: Alabama California Colorado Florida Illinois Kansas Kentucky Michigan New York North Carolina Ohio Pennsylvania South Carolina Tennessee Virginia Additional information regarding the outbreak can be found here. What if I bought whole cucumbers recently? If you have whole cucumbers at home and don’t know where theyre from, throw them out. You should also wash and sanitize surfaces and items that they may have come in contact with. If you experience severe symptoms of Salmonella, such as diarrhea and a fever higher than 102°F, or diarrhea that doesn’t improve after three days, contact a healthcare provider. Most people recover within a few days. Why does this sound familiar? This is not the first time that produce grown by Bedner Growers, Inc. has been linked to a Salmonella outbreak. A 2024 investigation found that cucumbers from Bedner Growers, Inc. and Thomas Produce Company, of Boca Raton, Florida, were likely sources of a Salmonella outbreak that resulted in 551 illnesses across 34 states and the District of Columbia. As part of a follow-up investigation, the FDA said it collected an environmental sample from Bedner Growers, Inc. in April 2025. The sample was positive for Salmonella and matched recent clinical samples of sick individuals impacted by the current outbreak. Fast Company has reached out to Bedner Growers for comment. We will update this post if we receive a response.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||