And I don’t think the problem is that ChatGPT suddenly makes Photoshop obsolete.
It’s that people may stop needing to open Photoshop in the first place.
Think about how image editing normally works.
You open Photoshop.
You find the right tool.
You learn how to use it.
You edit.
You export.
Now you can just talk to ChatGPT.
Upload the image.
“Remove this person.”
“Change the background.”
“Keep everything else exactly the same.”
“Make the logo bigger.”
“Put this product in a luxury store.”
Or just draw a terrible little sketch and tell it what you want.
ChatGPT Images 2.5 can do that now, while keeping much better consistency through multiple edits. OpenAI says more than 3 billion images are already created every week across ChatGPT Images and its image API.
That’s the part Adobe investors should care about.
Adobe built an incredible business around giving people powerful creative tools.
OpenAI is attacking something underneath that.
The need to learn the tools.
And once AI gets good enough, the average person doesn’t care whether the software underneath is Photoshop, Firefly or something else.
They care that they can get the picture they want.
Adobe knows this.
That’s why it’s putting Firefly and its creative tools inside ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and other platforms.
But that creates another weird problem.
Adobe may end up becoming the company supplying the tools inside someone else’s interface.
Meanwhile, the user starts thinking:
“I made this in ChatGPT.”
Not:
“I made this in Photoshop.”
That difference sounds small.
It isn’t.
Adobe is already down about 27% this year and more than 60% from its 2021 peak.
Now imagine ChatGPT keeps getting better at images, video, design and editing.
At some point, the question for Adobe isn’t:
“Can AI replace Photoshop?”
It’s:
“How much of the Photoshop workflow still needs to exist?”
That is a much scarier question for Adobe.