What happens when the world’s most-used creative tools get smarter — and creators worry they’re losing the wheel?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Eric Snowden, Senior Vice President of Design at Adobe, about how Adobe is weaving AI into Photoshop, Lightroom, Acrobat, and beyond — while trying to keep the tools respectful of craft, muscle memory, and the human spark. We dig into the bigger question beneath the feature releases: as AI accelerates creation, do we get more powerful… or do we become passengers approving machine outputs?

Key topics:

Two buckets of Adobe AI: upgrading existing tools vs building net-new AI products (00:04:55)

Photoshop “harmonize,” Lightroom auto culling, and Acrobat “PDF spaces” (00:04:55)

Why PDFs are a bottleneck for knowledge work, and how Acrobat can help you “get 80% of the way there” (00:07:18)

Project Graph explained: node-based workflows that stitch together building blocks like Firefly and Photoshop (00:08:25)

A concrete Project Graph example: 2D product photo → 3D asset → generated ad → multiple animated versions, with the user still in control (00:09:42)

Time saved vs creating more: how Firefly helped Adobe teams move faster and “make more things,” including “like 40% improvement” on time-to-market (00:14:28)

A Max London demo that captures the core principle: “his hand was on the wheel” (00:17:45)

“Quiet AI” in practice: enhanced audio in Adobe Podcast that can make phone-recorded audio sound studio-ready (00:19:57)

Respecting creative muscle memory: why “subtraction is not always good,” and why Adobe adds new workflows without removing old ones (00:24:43)

Firefly’s principles: licensed content, knowing what’s in the model, and compensating creators (00:29:29)

Content authenticity as a “nutritional label for AI”: immutable metadata describing what was done to an image (00:30:15)

The self-driving car analogy: creators need to be able to “grab the wheel” and tweak under the hood (00:36:00)

Vibe coding inside Adobe: designers using Cursor and internal tooling to build prototypes that hit real APIs (00:39:18)

A leadership playbook for AI adoption: focus the OKRs, make training practical, show examples, remove roadblocks (00:44:19)

The future of AI creative tools: communicating intent beyond text prompts, and shifting from “look what I do with AI” to storytelling (00:46:36)


Guest
Eric Snowden is the Senior Vice President of Design at Adobe, overseeing design and the AI-infused creative tools used by millions of creators.

Mentioned in this conversation
Adobe Firefly

Project Graph (node-based creative workflow building)

Enhanced audio in Adobe Podcast

Content authenticity / provenance metadata (“nutritional label” concept)

Cursor and “vibe coding” for rapid prototyping inside enterprise teams

Follow AI-Curious on your favorite podcast platform:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube
All Other Platforms

What happens when AI can “read the whole internet” but the internet stops volunteering its best work?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we talk with Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, about what he calls AI’s “broken social contract” with the web, and why the next era may be less about a “dead internet” and more about a dead public internet. We unpack the incentives that made the open web thrive, how AI search summaries change the traffic bargain, and what a realistic path forward could look like for publishers, platforms, and writers.

Key topics we cover:

-Why generative AI broke the web’s old value exchange, and what “social contract” means in practical terms (00:03:24)

-Tony’s “three Cs” framework for a healthier AI ecosystem: consent, credit, compensation (00:05:13)

-The publisher response spectrum: blocking crawlers, fighting spam/slop, and what happens if collaboration fails (00:04:25)

-The shift from public publishing to private communities (Discords, group chats, newsletters) and what drives that retreat (00:07:06)

-How AI search summaries can cut the incentive to publish publicly by reducing click-through and traffic (00:08:21)

-Why AI systems still depend on human source material, and what happens when the best content moves behind “closed doors” (00:09:27)

-Cloudflare’s role in the escalating crawler arms race, including large-scale blocking and other countermeasures (00:16:48)

-A proposed solution: an internet-wide licensing standard instead of one-off deals, including the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) approach (00:18:07)

-What “paying creators” could look like in practice, including opt-in/opt-out controls and better transparency for writers (00:19:33)

-“Dead internet theory” vs. the more plausible outcome: a dead public internet, and why Tony is cautiously optimistic about a new equilibrium (00:23:06)

-The “second wave” of AI: moving from replacement to augmentation, and how Medium is thinking about AI tools that support flow state rather than write for you (00:26:03)

-Why AI detectors don’t solve the problem, and why Medium focuses on quality and reader value as the enforceable standard (00:34:04)

-Advice for writers: the difference between the creator economy and the “expert economy,” and what’s likely to be more sustainable (00:38:43)

-Tony’s prediction: “trust but verify” becomes the balance point, and the web finds an equilibrium because AI can’t function without public sources (00:43:27)

Guest
Tony Stubblebine is the CEO of Medium and a leading voice on the evolving relationship between generative AI and the open web.
Mentioned in this conversation
Medium’s framework: Consent, Credit, Compensation

Follow AI-Curious on your favorite podcast platform:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube
All Other Platforms

Is AI making creators more powerful… or more replaceable? And if you start with a blank page for a living, there’s an even sharper question underneath it: should AI write for you… or write with you?

In this episode of AI-Curious, we sit down with Victor Varnado—a New Yorker cartoonist, comedian, actor, and creative technologist—to explore a grounded, practical philosophy for using AI without becoming a passenger.

Victor draws a sharp line between generative AI (press a button, get “a masterpiece”) and what he’s more interested in: transformative AI—tools that take messy raw material (notes, transcripts, half-ideas) and turn it into something structured enough to revise. We also talk about how taste becomes a real moat in an AI-saturated world, why “vibe coding” can go sideways fast when you don’t understand the domain, and how Victor’s accessibility-first mindset shapes everything he builds.

Along the way, Victor breaks down his tools—including Magic Bookifier and the Writing Coach—designed to get writers from zero to first draft faster through guided questions and structured interviews. He frames the goal with a concept he calls cognitive discourse: using AI like a thinking partner that makes you sharper, not a crutch that makes you lazier. His metaphor is perfect: do you talk with Einstein and get smarter… or do you just hand Einstein your homework?

We wrap by looking at Victor’s newest effort, BrightWrite, which aims to bring structured, supportive AI into education—especially for students facing cognitive or creative barriers. Victor also shares discount/freebie codes for listeners who want to try his tools, and we’ll include the specifics in the show notes and links.

Topics we cover:

• Victor’s multi-hyphenate path: comedy, New Yorker cartoons, production, and tech
• Why “transformative AI” is more useful than one-click generative output
• The Writing Coach approach: structured interviews that turn your ideas into drafts
• “Cognitive discourse” vs. “cognitive offload” (and the Einstein metaphor)
• Why taste may be the creative moat in an AI-heavy world
• The risks of “vibe coding” outside your expertise
• BrightWrite and the promise (and limits) of accessibility-first AI in education
• Practical ways to use AI for writing, revision, and everyday communication

Guest: Victor Varnado

Tools mentioned: Magic Bookifier, Writing Coach, BrightWrite