Short answer: Jordan Metzner says AI has not replaced Photoshop partly because continuity is hard: asking for a cowboy hat on Sam should still give you Sam, not a lookalike. New models such as Google's Nano Banana make this easier.
Watch this answer from Episode 10 (starts at 1:38) · Episode 10 notes and transcript
From Episode 10: Future in Focus: AI Tools & Big Tech, starting at 1:38.
Sam Nadler [1:38]: Jump right into the tool of the week. I think before you demonstrate the tool, I would love, like, a little bit of context. This is, like, right off the press. I mean, I think the tool that is the kind of foundation for this internal tool we built was launched yesterday. Give us a little bit of context of what's going on in the market and then the idea behind this tool?
Jordan Metzner [1:56]: Yeah. I think, I mean, everybody's going for, to try to replace Photoshop with AI. Photoshop is a huge tool, super robust. It has, tons of technology that's been built over twenty to thirty plus years of software development. Even though Figma is incredibly successful, great IPO, it hasn't replaced tools like Photoshop and some of the other Adobe Suite tools that are currently used by professionals every single day. Part of that is that, essentially creating continuity with AI is incredibly difficult. And what do I mean by continuity? Continuity, mean by, using a an image, asking AI to make changes to that image, and having the final image have those changes, but keep the continuity of the characters of the person throughout those changes. So if I ask something like, put a cowboy hat on Sam, I get a cowboy hat on Sam, but I still get Sam. I don't get another face that looks kinda like Sam.
Jordan Metzner [2:49]: And continuity has been somewhat challenging for most of these AI models. And with the release of a few new most recent models, including Google's new Nano Banana model, which we'll talk about a little bit later in the episode, it has made it easier to, essentially use AI to describe what you'd like to do and how you'd like to get it built. I have built us a small kind of chatbot based image based editing tool, And I'll show you a small sample of it here, and we can kind of play with it just to show how a fun tool like this could be valuable to, kind of any small business, especially like kind of ecommerce businesses or other businesses in which, they constantly need to make product shots, headshots, all different types of things. So I took this quick screenshot of myself right before we start to record this episode. And I think it might be good if you give me a few suggestions. So maybe you can give me, like, a style and maybe some ideas so we can change this up just to show this is, like, kinda hot off the fly.
