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Jun 30 2025
Software

Using Generative AI to Unlock College Students’ Creative Potential

Tools such as Adobe’s Firefly allow artificial intelligence-assisted outlining and have features to spruce up the final product.

Part of the seemingly limitless potential of artificial intelligence is taking skills that were once restricted to a small group of professionals and extending the opportunity to the masses. Take college students, for example.

Stuck on an essay? Ask a generative AI for an outline to get you going in the right direction. Need to write a grant proposal for a research project? Get tips from a large language model. Need to design a poster to promote that big event you’ve been working on?

AI can help with that too.

Adobe Creative Cloud, the comprehensive suite of creative tools used by professional graphic designers, animators, filmmakers, audio producers and others, has unveiled further integrations and iterations of its generative AI tool, Firefly, that promise to spark creative ideas and sharpen projects before they reach the finish line.

RELATED: Adobe’s suite of creative tools can give college students a leg up after graduation.

Generative AI Allows Students to ‘Ideate, Create and Collaborate’

It’s been almost three years since OpenAI’s large language model, ChatGPT, upended the tech world and became the buzziest tool of the past decade. Since that time, LLMs have worked their way into all kinds of places, creating more intuitive chatbots, offering real-time assistance inside learning management systems and popping up in just about every piece of software you might have installed on your device.

This includes Adobe Creative Cloud, where Firefly’s integration in Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Adobe Express, Illustrator and InDesign offers users the ability to create images using only a text prompt. Need an image of a coiled pink snake with a flower pattern on its scales? Just ask.

Firefly can also be used to generate videos and graphics, animate stills and condense videos into bite-size clips for social media. College students with these tools at their fingertips can enhance their portfolios, optimize their projects and feel ready to go into their careers with experience working with AI, something employers are looking for in recent college grads.

In April, Adobe announced it was also releasing Firefly as a stand-alone app, one that puts all of its generative AI capabilities in one place and offers integration with Google, OpenAI and other major tech companies.

The app also includes Firefly Boards, described by the company as an “AI-first workspace for moodboarding, rapid concept exploration and collaborative ideation.” Students can work together inside a board or collaborate with instructors, with AI helping them along the way. Firefly also promises to assist with voice translation, boost static-to-video conversions and even help seasoned designers by simplifying what were once time-consuming alterations.

Any tool that can help students save time, take projects from good to great and make a college graduate more attractive to employers is one that should appeal to higher education institutions. Pairing generative AI with powerful creative software unlocks even greater possibilities.

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