After OpenAI’s Sora launch, Adobe is falling behind with its AI video roll-out

Two months after Adobe announced a browser-based video generation tool, the product remains in limited testing, while OpenAI publicly launched Sora this week

Reading Time:2 minutes

The stand for US computer software company Adobe seen at Web Summit in Lisbon on November 12, 2024. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:13am, 11 Dec 2024

Adobe is rolling out its AI video product much more slowly than OpenAI’s rival Sora service, fuelling concerns that the creative software company is falling behind.

Two months after Adobe announced a browser-based tool that could generate videos from prompts or images using generative artificial intelligence, the product remains in limited testing, only accessible by a handful of creators who have agreements with the company. Sora, meanwhile, was made available to a wide audience this week.

“To best support a wide variety of use cases and to ensure model safety, we’re opening up access to the beta on a limited basis with a focus on gathering feedback,” Adobe says on its website, inviting users to “join the wait-list”.

The company, which releases quarterly earnings Wednesday, announced the product as part of its Firefly family of AI features during its annual user conference in early October. At the time, it said the tool was already “rolling out in limited public beta”. Adobe has also launched a tool in Premiere, its video-editing app, which lets users extend video clips using generative AI.

A screen grab of a video generated by OpenAI’s Sora, a text-to-video model. Photo: OpenAI

An Adobe spokesperson said Tuesday that the company will expand availability in the weeks and months ahead. “Adobe Firefly is the only commercially safe video model available and we’ve seen strong customer response following the release just six weeks ago.”