Ely Greenfield, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Adobe, defended on Tuesday, November 10th, the opening of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects to competing AI agents like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Grok, without being able to say how far this access will go. The private beta for local MCP integrations in Creative Cloud is planned for early 2027.
For a year, Adobe has been integrating AI across its entire suite, but until now, these were its own assistants. At the Adobe MAX event, the publisher presented local MCP integrations for Creative Cloud. This feature is meant to allow an external AI agent to directly edit Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects files stored on the computer.
That same evening, Ely Greenfield detailed this position in front of about 25 media outlets gathered in Miami Beach.
An MCP server in the Adobe suite
The Creative Cloud suite will offer a local MCP server. For subscribers, this means they will be able to give instructions to Photoshop from ChatGPT or Claude. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard launched by Anthropic in November 2024, which works like a common socket: software plugs into it once and becomes usable by all compatible assistants. Adobe can thus connect to it without favoring a competitor.
Unlike the remote connectors the publisher already offered in ChatGPT or Claude, the agent here does not go through an external server. The connector works locally and directly works on the original file, whose layers, vectors, and timeline remain manually editable.
An opening without announced limits
For Ely Greenfield, the subscription is not at risk. “If you use MCP, it means you have our tools. You remain our customer,” he summarizes. He emphasizes that “most content made with AI ends up in our tools at some point” to be finalized. He therefore prefers that Adobe be present from the start of the work, including in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Grok, which he sees becoming “hubs” where everyone organizes their own working methods. “Wherever creation happens, that’s where our business is,” he says.
As soon as details are discussed, however, the executive becomes more cautious. He assures that there are “no barriers to using our technology where and how you want,” but refuses to promise that AI “will be able to control 100% of our tools.” When asked about the availability of all functions, he replies: “Will everything we do in our tools be available? I don’t want to be that categorical.” He concludes: “Everything that needs to be opened, we will open.” However, Adobe itself chooses the functions accessible via its MCP server.
Adobe has not yet published the list of compatible agents. Local MCP integrations will first arrive in a private beta in early 2027 for Creative Cloud subscribers, with no specific date or price announced.
