SVP at Adobe Express: Why AI Content Doesn't Get Views | Govind Balakrishnan

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Speaker C: Some content gets promoted by social media, it gets admired, and some content just stinks. What's the difference?

Speaker D: Our bar for what we are willing to consume as content is actually going up.

Speaker C: This is Govind Balakrishnan. He runs Adobe Express and Adobe put it straight into Microsoft Copilot. 350 million people now have his tool inside the apps they already use.

Speaker D: I find that a number of creators are essentially just using AI to create content, but not spending the time to actually make it their own, to bring their own voice into it.

Speaker C: The best content still takes a lot of time, even with AI. What advice would you give them? As someone who's been in the industry for 20 years, I would say to

Speaker D: start with, embrace the change that's happened. The way you create content has evolved, has changed. And then

Speaker B: hello everyone.

Speaker C: Welcome to Silicon Valley girl, and welcome to Cannes. We're here at Adobe with Govind, who is running Adobe Express and does a lot of cool things at Adobe. I'm really excited to talk to you about the future of creativity. What designers should be thinking about when it comes to planning their career in five years. What should creators be thinking about when they're using a lot of AI tools to create content? So my first question is, we all got access to these amazing tools, but some content gets promoted by social media, it gets admired, and some content just stinks. What's the difference?

Speaker D: I think if you really think about it, I mean, what's changed quite recently is that everyone now has access to tools and capabilities that helps them be creative. Like for the longest time, uh, creativity was limited by the tools, uh, and the need to be proficient in those tools before you could actually create content. Uh, now we are in that phase where everyone has the ability to create content. But the difference between content that succeeds and the ones that don't, it really comes down to the human element that goes into the content. So when we look at content that succeeds, we find that the creators who focus more on a distinct point of view, a clear, um, visual identity and a voice that their users trust, the people who focus on bringing those elements into their creativity are the ones that are actually standing out. If all you're doing is creating content using AI and just putting it out there without essentially bringing your voice into it, then chances are it's not going to really stand out, it's not going to be successful.

Speaker C: How do you learn it? So I understand telling my own story when it comes to just talking to a camera, when it comes to creating something visual, how do you learn this taste? Because what actually matters these days a lot is taste. And I don't think I have great taste. I have designers on my team, I have a stylist, because it just doesn't come naturally to me. Is there a way I can learn it so that I create visual assets that blow people away?

Speaker D: Yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to knowing what your voice is. What do you stand for? Right. What's your unique sort of taste, as you put it? What unique sauce that do you have that will make the story, the visual, the creative that you're working on stand out? Because at the end of the day, we all have our own visual identity. Right. And the key and the trick is to find ways to pull that out and have that surface in the content that you're creating. So with a tool like Adobe Express, for instance, or Firefly, for that matter, we are giving you a number of controls, uh, to bring your own taste into the picture, into the conversation. Right. Uh, you can either use the granular controls that we have around, use it by filters, by controls, by fonts, by colors and all that. But we are now also surfacing the AI assistant in the, uh, tool.

Speaker C: It's in beta. Yeah, I clicked it yesterday still.

Speaker D: Exactly. And what it does is it actually, it was as of a couple of months back, we gave you the ability to enter a prompt and have it generate content for you. It can be an image, it can be a design, it can be a presentation, as the case may be. But we have taken it further to make it conversational. And through that conversational interface, you're essentially speaking with the tool with the application to get it to build or create exactly what it is that you're trying to create. Hm. So that your unique taste and your unique voice comes through.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: And at some level, as you ask, I mean, how do you know? You know by actually seeing the content and feeling like you relate to it. Like more often than not, I find that a number of creators are essentially just using AI to create content, but not spending the time to actually make it their own, to bring their own voice into it, to bring their own uh, vision into it. And that's where I feel like if through trial and error, I feel like creatives, the creators who have succeeded have figured it out and those are the ones who break through.

Speaker C: Would you say the best process is before you even generate something with AI, is to talk to AI and figure out your brand kit and then move it to everything. Would you say that's the right thing to do?

Speaker D: I think that's a great first step for all creative creators. Um, and it's a step that is quite often forgotten, I would say, or ignored. Uh, people don't start by clearly building their brand or brand kit in a tool like Express. Uh, once you have your brand kit, you can actually iterate through a number of designs and apply your brand kit on those designs. Like we have a one click brand apply brand capability in Express, where you can essentially create a bunch of variations, so to speak, of your design and apply the brand kit and see how that looks. And what I would also encourage you to do, if you're still in the midst of finding your true, your identity, so to speak, is to test the content. We make it incredibly easy to publish your content to various channels, publish different versions of your content to different channels and see what's, what resonates with your audience. Because at the end of the day your audience knows you better than, or you know yourself better than anyone else actually.

Speaker C: Can you walk me through posting, uh, with Adobe Express? What's the process?

Speaker D: Oh, so we are, uh, we have this uh, calendaring option, uh, within Adobe Express. So from within Express you can connect, uh, your social media channels, be it Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. You, you have the ability to connect, um, those channels through the app itself and you can schedule your content, uh, through them. You have a full calendar view. So if you're working by yourself, you can essentially uh, schedule and post your content. The calendar itself can be shared with your team. You said you have uh, creatives who work with you. You can essentially collaborate through the calendar where everyone has access to the same calendar and you can post different pieces of content to different channels at different points in time, day, date, et cetera, uh, through that interface and through that experience and all of that is integrated deeply into the product.

Speaker C: What do you think is going to happen to the content world in general if AI is lowering the barrier to enter and then everybody starts working on their style and um, sense of what's, what's beautiful? Don't you think there will be too much content in the world so that it's going to be very hard for new creators or even like established creators to get visibility?

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Speaker D: Absolutely. I mean this is something that I've been, um, I've been saying for, for a couple of months, uh, with the advent of AI, uh, what we're now seeing is that the barrier to entry, so to speak, for content creation has been lowered dramatically. Right? So now if you're an individual who has a story to tell or has an idea to, uh, put onto a visual design, there is no excuse to not try to do it. But what it's translated to is that we as humans are now flooded with content. And I think what's happening there is that our bar as humans, our bar for what we are willing to consume as content, is actually going up.

Speaker C: Social media is so smart now.

Speaker D: That's right. So smart people are smart, right? I mean if you just post AI generated content, people just tune you out.

Speaker C: They don't actually look at it like basic stuff. Nobody cares.

Speaker D: Nobody cares. It's. And the, and the distinction is so stark. Like we keep talking about how the social media algorithms are filtering out content that's created by AI. The reality is it's us humans who are filtering it out, right? If you don't take the time and effort to make your content stand out. It will not break through. It will not break through because we are dealing with a sea of sameness of content. Like, we are flooded with content just coming at us from everywhere. And I think as humans, it doesn't even matter what the algorithms are doing. As humans, we are doing a great job of tuning out content that doesn't resonate with us. And the onus then is on the creators and the creatives to make sure that the content that they produce is unique, is distinctive, has a unique point of view, and breaks through in a meaningful way. At least breaks through with their audience. Right. That they're going after.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, uh, I don't know if you're seeing, like, if you have any stats on this, but what I'm seeing as a creator, yes, AI tools augmented the process that I'm, um, that how I'm creating content. But I'm still spending pretty much the same amount of time when it comes to writing a beautiful text. Yes, my process is different. I'm chatting to my AI and saying, oh, I don't like this, change that. But it still takes like an hour to create a beautiful piece of. Piece of content. Do you have any stats for that? Like, because I think the process has changed, but the best content still takes a lot of time, even with AI.

Speaker D: I completely agree with that. I don't have a stat that supports that, so to speak, but it would be very interesting. But I'll say this right. The narrative that I hear a lot of these days is that AI is eroding creativity. And what we are seeing, uh, through our tools and through the work that's being done by the users of our products is that AI is actually amplifying creativity. What it's giving you is that is the ability, as you rightly said, to have the time and the space to bring human judgment into your creative work and into your creative process. Right. It's no longer. You're no longer limited by your skill level with the tool. Like, that part has been taken care of for the most part. Right. So, uh, you get to a point, I mean, you can say whether it's 20% or 80%, I would say in most cases, you get to 60 to 70% of the creative work using these tools that get you there really, really fast. But then now you have more time to get that last mile. Whether you call it 20%, 30%, 10%, doesn't matter. But that last mile.

Speaker C: Hm.

Speaker D: That you introduce your unique taste Voice, source, you can use different words. You now have more time to do that and you now have more time to get that right and make that content really compelling.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: So that's the part that I am really excited about, like, because I feel like the narrative is quite incorrect.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: AI is not eroding creativity, it's actually making it more accessible, but it's also amplifying creativity in very meaningful ways.

Speaker C: So do you think with all of this we're going to have more designers in the future? Or like, I'm just trying to understand, like when it comes to engineers, for example, right. Their process has been augmented by, I don't know, 90%. Right. Because it's mostly, um, AI generated code and then people just check it. Um, when it comes to designers, do you think they are the next profession that's going to be augmented? And um, does it mean we're going to have less designers?

Speaker D: I would position it slightly differently. I think, uh, the role that designers play in the creative process, uh, is evolving. Uh, as we just spoke, the speed at which you create is changing. Right. So you don't need a designer to do everything by hand as much as you did even a year back. But what the designers have to do is to really figure out the strategy of, uh, how you get the content that you're creating to stand out and really meet your audience where they want to be met. And that is a pretty significant shift. So I wouldn't say that the. And this is exactly what's happening with software engineering as well. At least we haven't gotten to a point where we need fewer engineers. We are getting to a point where the work that's done by the engineers is slightly different. Uh, and the speed at which they can create or generate code, uh, or build code, build capabilities has become faster, but their role has changed. And similarly with design, you need people who come up with a strategy. Strategy for which, what is the unique voice that I bring to the table? Which channels work better? What kind of content works for which channel? When we spoke about the sea of sameness, how do I stand out in the sea of sameness? How do I not look like everyone else? What strategy can I use? Uh, from our content, from our text, from a visual point of view, to make it look different. So I think the role changes. I don't think the number of designers actually changes in many ways. Given the need to stand out, I would say that you probably will end up needing more designers over time.

Speaker C: Can you give an example of a process that has to be done with AI so that anyone can do like a quick check, what am I doing day to day? What should AI be handling for me?

Speaker D: It can also do things like accessibility checking. It can make sure that your text is of the right font, the right size. But all that can be done automatically. You don't have to do it manually. And I am continuing to see more and more, sorry, designers not necessarily adopt these capabilities probably because they don't know that they exist. Maybe we need to do a better job of surfacing them more prominently. But the capabilities exist and it's a matter of just using them and not spend the time fine tuning these uh, capabilities. Sorry, these uh, brand elements. The other one I'll quickly touch on is essentially creating variations of your content for different channels. Because most creators and creatives are ah, trying to meet their audience and their community through various channels and they are tweaking the content by hand to essentially optimize the content for various channels. When in reality, tools like Express, within Express give you the ability to do that with a click of a button. Like for example, you can essentially create a post for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook with a click of a button.

Speaker C: Oh, with different resolutions, uh, resolution.

Speaker D: And it will essentially reset your design and adjust your design to fit the format that you're trying to resize for.

Speaker C: Okay, we need to take it a step further. I want to be able to upload my podcast and create a carousel, please. I think using like connecting the formats because it's still where a lot of work happens. I'd ideally just give it uh, the highlights and tell like, hey, this is a podcast, this is what ideally I want it to be and just create this repurposing. I think this is what the market really, really wants.

Speaker D: Yeah. So this is very, very much aligned with um, some of the work that we are doing. So as I said, I think you have a role to play in our, in our advisory board. So that's great. But uh, um, one of the areas that we are actually investing quite heavily, it's not taking a podcast to create content, uh, but we're investing heavily in uh, taking um, PDF documents in Acrobat and taking the consumption workflow of uh, documents in Acrobat and converting them into visual documents like a presentation, like a

Speaker C: flyer, like that new Acrobat feature, the spaces. Right. I really, really like it. I think it makes so much sense. Instead of sending a PDF, you can send, you can just chat with it. Basically you send a workspace that you can use for whatever. I think that thing I really, really appreciate it as someone who works with a lot of PDFs and has to chat with them.

Speaker D: So the use case that you brought up around taking a podcast and converting that into an Instagram carousel is another use case that's quite similar because you're taking a consumption modality, so to speak, to a creation modality. Right. And that's an area as I said, we are absolutely focused on. We're spending more time doing that right now with uh, PDF documents and Acrobat, but we do expect to expand that to other modalities as well.

Speaker C: That would be awesome. Hopefully like in the next year it's more automated because that's a lot of management from my side when it comes to distributing the podcast across different social media. Um, I have another question. So what's happening with the way we work these days is that we basically like it used to be multiple windows, right? My email, my, um, Slack, then I have different windows open with different apps. What we're seeing now is that we select one AI that we're working with and a lot of tools are getting embedded in that AI. There are connectors, etc. So I'm just basically in one chat window. Do you see this as a threat to Adobe? If Adobe is integrated in my AI and I never see the brand, I'm um, just like calling out a tool and I'm just talking to my chat.

Speaker D: At the end of the day, what matters most was um, Marina is the ability to meet our customers where they are and where they're trying to get their work done. Right. Um, as you said, increasingly these services are becoming your one stop shop for work, all the work, all your work. Right. And to expect uh, you to, or to force you to essentially go to a completely different product or a different experience just for your creative, the creative part of your workflow when everything else is happening in these chat platforms feels uh, doesn't feel sort of welcoming or doesn't feel creator friendly. So our focus right now is to essentially meet our customers where they are. Uh, as I mentioned briefly, we have already done this at scale within Acrobat where we are now contextually surfacing many of the creation capabilities that you get from Express within Acrobat. So you could be reading a document, you see an image, we give you the ability to edit the that image. Uh, you could take a document and create a presentation from it. So you're not forced to go into Express to create a presentation. You're in Acrobat, you're creating a presentation, you're in Acrobat, you're editing an image. So we started doing that around a year back and we have built a ton of experience and expertise doing that by contextually surfacing the right experiences in that surface. And now we're taking that photo further by contextually surfacing design capabilities in some of these platforms, chat platforms. So that we meet you where you are, you still have the ability to go to our products and use them there. You may still need to go there to do finer grained editing and finer grain control. But we are hoping that you get a good part of the way uh, by just using the capabilities that are accessible through those platforms.

Speaker A: Platforms.

Speaker C: So you've been doing this for 20 years, right? You've been in the industry, what and you've seen so many things happen, right? We went from you know, computer to mobile, social media. What is the one thing that hasn't changed in the past 20 years that you think is not going to change in the next 10 years?

Speaker D: Yeah, it's actually been quite a journey to be very honest. I, uh, mean as you mentioned, two tools have changed, uh, platforms have changed the channels where uh, people create content and publish content has changed. The speed uh, of uh, creating content has changed uh, dramatically over the past couple of years in particular. But the one thing that has uh, actually remained constant is the innate uh, desire that humans have to say something and to create content that is truly and authentically theirs.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: That's the one thing that has actually never changed in the past. You needed to be a creative professional, so to speak. Right. You needed to be a painter, you needed to be a digital artist who's, who can use a tool like Photoshop and Illustrator to actually be able to, you know, say something or create something that was truly yours. Now that's no longer an issue, so to speak. But that innate desire has actually always existed. That is why companies like Adobe have, you know, done what they have done. Because our mission from the very beginning, uh, previously we used to say it is creativity for all. Now around a year back we um, shifted it slightly to say empowering everyone to create. And that mission statement is rooted in the fact that every human wants to, they have something to say and wants to be able to say it in, in their own way, their own voice. And, and that's the one thing that hasn't changed.

Speaker C: Can you give advice to people who really want to start saying something and express their creativity, but they don't know where to start because there are so many tools and everything? Can you give Them like first three steps they should take.

Speaker D: Um, I mean, uh, coming from Adobe and Express, I would say they should open up Adobe Express or Firefly and start with the AI assistant. Um, we now have the AI Assistant in both products, uh, to describe what you want to say and uh, converse with the application to essentially help the application create what you wanted to create and iterate on it enough to make it feel like it's yours. Right. Um, don't just settle, uh, don't take what comes up first and say, okay, I'm done. But take the time to really make it yours. So start by. Start with the tool, start with the AI Assistant. It is the simplest way to essentially describe what's in your mind's eye.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: Right. Use words to describe in your what's in your mind's eye and, and see what the tool does for you.

Speaker C: Two more steps or that's it?

Speaker D: I would say that's the first. Uh, that's the most, that's the most important one. And I would maybe the second. And the third step is just iterate on it as much as you can.

Speaker C: I think posting is really important because a lot of people iterate, iterate, iterate. And they never post because they think it's imperfect. So they never get feedback.

Speaker D: That's actually a really important point. It's post and iterate based on results. Don't iterate just based on what you think is right. Because more often than not what we think is right or what we think is perfect is not what's right.

Speaker C: Oh yeah. And you see this trend on social media now when you're trying to create imperfect content to just make sure, you know, everybody understands that it's in the moment. Like the social media stuff. Yeah. Okay. Um, Three years from now, how much of today's design work you think still needs a human? Where does the human stay?

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Speaker D: It will come down to the, uh, strategy and the human judgment piece that we, uh, that we spoke about that is going to be where we are going to continue to need humans, especially because more and more content is going to be generated. Um, I think we are going to find ways to, we are going to have to find ways to make the content stand out. And if we don't leverage human judgment to help us do that, um, I think you're going to find, increasingly you're going to find creators who will struggle to break through. So um, the speed of evolution, the speed of creation is only going to continue to increase and I think we just need to not lose sight of who we are, uh, what's unique about us, uh, what makes us and our content different from everyone else and how we sort of use the tools and capabilities to make the content different from everyone else.

Speaker C: Can we wrap up with advice for people who are scared about the future? Maybe there is a designer watching or listening to this and they're like, yeah, I already see less clients because they're opting for AI tools and I'm scared what to expect. What advice would you give them? As someone who's been in the industry for 20 years?

Speaker D: Yeah, I would say to start with, embrace, uh, the change that's happening. Embrace the fact that content creation, the way you create content, has evolved, has changed. And then look for ways to be unique. Look for ways to show how you can build a brand and extend a brand. Right. And that brand, and more often than not could be your own brand. And that's perfectly not just fine, that's actually great.

Speaker C: That's the best.

Speaker D: That's the best, Exactly. So don't settle, mhm. Uh, for something that's, that's no different from someone else. Like bring your element, your human element into the creative process and make it stand out. Right. I mean, you have to find what's different because we're all dealing with an unbelievable amount of content that's coming at us and that is not sustainable. It's not sustainable. It's not what's going to succeed. Succeed. The creators who succeed are the ones who recognize that they need to stand out in a meaningful way.

Speaker C: Totally. And as someone who hires creative people all the time, I would say the market hasn't adopted yet because we're like, we're actively looking for people, we need people. But it's so hard to find someone who already embraced those tools. A lot of people are doing it the old way, which is great and it's still working. But let's think about what's on going, going to happen in two years. Right. You just want to execute at a faster speed. You want to be able to create different visuals for different companies within a few hours, and AI tools are going to help you with that. And eventually you'll be able to take on more clients.

Speaker D: You're going to be able to take on more clients and still deliver content that stands out, that is differentiated, that can break through, that people want to consume.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Gavin, thank you so much. It was very inspiring, very encouraging. And as a user, I'm waiting for those features. Podcast to Carousel, please. Or, like, even like, voice Note to Carousel, if it's a single app. Oh, my God, you're gonna crush it.

Speaker D: Okay, well, you got it.

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Speaker C: Thank you.