Adobe and TED team up again to reimagine the future of creativity

Adobe is partnering with TED to demonstrate what human inventiveness might look like in a future propelled by AI superpowers.

Adobe, a global leader in generative AI, is the Strategic Design Partner at TED2025 this week for the second year in a row. The theme of the conference will be “Humanity Reimagined.”

“We are honored to continue our partnership with TED,” said Amit Singh, Senior Director of Global Brand Partnerships at Adobe. “Our brands share a common belief that creativity propels human potential, and TED2025 is a powerful platform to showcase our commitment to the design community.”

The partnership between Adobe and TED is a natural one, according to Adobe’s principal product marketing manager Patricia Buffa: “For the past decades, both TED and Adobe have been reflecting on technology, entertainment, and design. We both share a creator-centric ethos and care deeply about the advancement of the future of creativity.”

While TED has been offering a platform for brilliant thinkers and pioneers to come together for meaningful conversations, Adobe has continuously empowered creativity by supplying the most advanced technology.

At the same time, generative AI has raised questions about how humans will interact with these new models of machine intelligence, acknowledged Adobe’s chief technology officer Ely Greenfield. In fact, Greenfield said, generative AI is allowing people to unleash their inner creators.

“Creativity is an inherently human trait,” he said, “so AI is not going to replace you — it’s going to allow you to explore more ideas, edit and create much faster, and produce content you might never have been able to before.”

At TED2025, Adobe is featuring and demonstrating three industry-leading, AI-enabled products — Adobe Firefly, Adobe Acrobat, and Adobe Express — all of which supercharge human creativity and productivity, allowing creators to fly higher and faster than ever.

As a way to emphasize and enhance the creator in all of us, Adobe is also launching “Creative Types Shape the Future” at TED2025. Powered by Firefly, the new, interactive quiz reveals not just what kind of creative type you are, but what kind of creative you can become.

Consisting of 15 different questions, accompanied by engaging animations, the quiz reveals which of eight new Future Creative Types are at your core — whether, for example, you’re the Alchemist, the Catalyst, the Regenerator or the Luminary.

“The approach of the new test is to explore what kind of creative you can become to contribute towards our common future,” said Adobe’s senior creative director Kashka Pregowska-Czerw. “Everybody has a creative type, a creative side that they use, if not in their job, then perhaps in their passion project. We want to empower people to lean into their creative strengths as well as their potential.”

The quiz can also help you discover what other creative types you would work best with on a given project. But you can go further than that. Using generative-AI-powered Acrobat and Express, you can also personalize and customize your creative type, which is represented by a graphic avatar. For example, you can add more physical features to your avatar or a stunning background. Then you can share it on social platforms.

While the quiz is fun to take and designed to look and feel playful, there’s actually a tremendous amount of research and personality psychology behind it, which makes the quiz highly accurate, according to creative strategist Carolyn Gregoire, who researched and wrote the quiz.

“People should deeply resonate with the results,” Gregoire said.

Attendees can take the quiz at the conference via Adobe’s Reimagination Lounge that features three larger-than-life interactive exhibits and demonstrations for Firefly, Express, and Acrobat. By taking the quiz, visitors can discover their creative type and then summarize, stylize, and share the results.

The goals of Adobe’s Reimagination Lounge are to provide a meaningful experience for attendees in three main ways:

• Inspire — Facilitate deeper thinking about AI, creativity and technology.
• Engage — Stimulate interactions among attendees to promote the exchange of ideas and insights about the future of creativity.
• Teach — Demonstrate Firefly and AI features in tools like Express and Acrobat and provide glimpses into what’s being developed.

On Thursday, April 10, at 3 p.m. PT, the conference is also featuring a “Spotlight Conversation” on the intersection of technology, creativity and design. Moderated by Futurist and Strategist AC Coppens, the panel will include Adobe’s Greenfield as well as Apolinario Passos, machine learning art engineer at Hugging Face.

The intimate, focused discussion will shine a light on some of the most pressing and innovative ideas of our time, presenting a deep dive into relevant topics such as the intersection of technology, creativity and design, and balancing AI innovations with ethical practices.

The panel will discuss, for example, whether generative AI will replace human creativity or augment and accelerate it. Greenfield is convinced AI will advance human creativity: “AI is involving more people in creativity and expanding what’s possible. It’s democratizing creativity.”