‘AI holds potential of democratising, enabling creativity for all’, says Adobe’s Shanmugh Natarajan

Just like IBM’s Watson, Adobe’s Sensei AI is being integrated in a range of applications, mainly focused on productivity. Here’s what to expect from Adobe’s Sensei AI platform in the near future.

Adobe has no plans to extend its Sensei AI platform to non-Adobe products and services. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Artificial Intelligence is the hottest buzzword in the technology space. With almost all major sectors including healthcare and education embracing the technology, leading tech players are too launching platform and services to keep up.

Amazon, IBM, Google and Microsoft are some of the top names that have been making giant investments in the AI space. Adobe, one of the oldest tech companies, is also taking a shot at the technology with Sensei. As a proof of concept, Adobe has included Sensei AI platform in various consumer platforms. For instance, its basic Scan application uses AI to convert physical business cards into digital cards.

We spoke to Shanmugh Natarajan - MD, VP (Products), Adobe India, to explore more on Artificial Intelligence and Sensei platform. Here are edited excerpts.

What will be the best way to define Artificial Intelligence?

Be it web searches or e-commerce recommendations or voice assistants, artificial intelligence has become a substantial part of our everyday lives. At Adobe, we view Artificial Intelligence as a transformational force in creative expression and business. Owing to its ability of reducing the mundane of the creative process, AI holds potential of democratizing and enabling creativity for all. For businesses, AI enables faster and smarter decision making by bringing actionable insights out of complicated information. This helps ease the delivery of timely and customised customer experiences. Our fundamental belief is that if AI is developed in a manner that serves the creator and respects the consumer, it will make the advent of the internet and mobile phones look minor by comparison.

What are the top products and services using Sensei?

Today, there are dozens of Sensei-powered capabilities in product or in our pipeline across Adobe Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Experience Cloud. These capabilities are helping our customers streamline and optimize their workflow - whether they're designing an app, editing a photo or film, or launching a marketing campaign. Sensei is unique in two fundamental ways: First, it harnesses the vast amount of data and content flowing through our cloud solutions. Second, it has a deep understanding of how our customers work in the design and delivery of great experiences.

Adobe Sensei's intelligent capabilities in Adobe Creative Cloud are helping automate mundane tasks, allowing creatives to spend more time on inspiration and design. Sensei is at the heart of Adobe Document Cloud with technology that works on your behalf, automating repetitive tasks and boosting productivity. Within Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Sensei crunches data - helping marketers see how their customers behave and help anticipate what they'll want next.

Do you plan to use/offer Sensei to non-Adobe products?

Adobe has a broad platform strategy and strong community of customers and developers. Through Adobe Sensei services, we are starting to make Sensei available to an ecosystem of partners, ISVs and developers, who can extend Adobe's cloud offerings and build custom solutions on top of them. Adobe Sensei is currently not available to non-Adobe products.

What Sensei has to offer to end users?

We are building Adobe Sensei as a creative partner to help tackle time-consuming tasks that get in the way of creative vision. No one ever wants to take three hours to do something if they can do it in three seconds. Sensei is helping users tackle complex experience challenges of today, such as understanding large amounts of content at a deep level, like the sentiment of documents, language of images, illustration, etc. and takes over the repetitive tasks, so users can spend more time on bringing their ideas to life. It empowers users to deliver relevant, personalized experiences in real time by learning what customers want, identifying significant events and making recommendations to reach the right customer at the right time.

How is Adobe's foray in AR, VR, AI and ML different than any other company?

Emerging technologies like AR/VR, AI and ML are reshaping the way we engage with the world around us. Each one of us today is a storyteller and is finding ways of doing so with impact. At Adobe, we have always focussed on building software that gives way to human ingenuity and frees users from the need of knowing coding or being technical experts. We are creating software for everyone - be it an enthusiast or an expert. This, we believe is a real breakthrough.

Our quest of building products that empower has never been a rushed attempt. We strategically timed our foray into the areas of new age tech be it AI and ML with Adobe Sensei or AR with Project Aero. Our focus has always been on laying the right foundational blocks. Towards that, we're working side by side with artists, designers, marketers, etc. to ensure that they have the tools they need to create for the new reality.