Adobe previews AI tools that turn photos into 3D scenes you can walk through

Adobe has shown off a set of experimental AI tools at its annual Max conference. The headline one, Project Sight Span, takes a flat image and turns it into a 3D space you can look around in. Another lets you shape an AI character by chatting with it. These are previews, not products you can use today.

What Adobe showed

Sight Span works with photos, paintings and illustrations. It generates objects and backgrounds outside the original frame, so you can turn and see what is behind you. While you move around, the view looks pixelated and rough. Quality is restored once you pick an angle. The Verge compares it to Apple's Spatial Reframing feature, but more extreme, and says the result feels less like a photo afterward.

Project Screen Test is built for AI video. You pick a few traits, such as anxious and shy, and give the character a voice. Then you talk to it like a video call to fill in its backstory, goals, flaws and fears. Finally, you generate short animated clips by describing a scene. The Verge found the personalities more consistent than many AI characters.

Two more previews

• Project Sound Bender: upload a video clip, describe the sound you want, and drag a cursor around a square to blend AI-made effects.
• Project Rinse Repeat: copy a Photoshop edit, such as a blemish touch-up, onto other people or objects in the same photo.
• Rinse Repeat can also add shadows to products of different shapes in marketing images, and the edits stay editable.

Why this matters

If you edit photos, video or marketing images, these previews hint at where Adobe's apps may be heading. A common thread is making complicated editing, filmmaking and audio work easier for more people. The Verge also notes a bigger point. If tools like these prove useful enough, AI could eventually replace some of the tools and stock libraries that creative professionals rely on now.

What is not known yet

These showcases are called sneaks. They are early tech previews that might become features in Adobe's Creative Cloud apps or its Firefly platform, but there is no guarantee. Almost all are built on Adobe's generative AI, meaning AI that creates new images, video or sound, so some may well launch. It is unclear how Screen Test would fit into Adobe's existing video tools. The report gives no release dates or prices.