Adobe Starts the Story—Now It’s Your Turn to Finish It With AI
With “The Unfinished Film,” Adobe hands the director’s chair to creators, using Firefly to explore how AI can democratize storytelling—without replacing it
Adobe is keen on showcasing the creative power of its Firefly AI. To achieve this goal, the company is launching “The Unfinished Film,” a collaborative project helmed by director Sam Finn with the premise that only the beginning of the movie has been created; the rest is up to you. Creators, filmmakers, designers, artists, and storytellers are invited to use AI to produce the ending.
Have you watched a movie or a short film and wondered what it would be like if the plot took a different direction? Was it missing a few key elements? What if you were the director? With "The Unfinished Film," Adobe and Finn surrender the director's chair to any creator to execute their vision. They got the ball rolling—now it's time to make it into a blockbuster film.
“Creativity is better when it’s shared. Creativity rarely happens in a straight line, and it’s almost never a solo act,” Stacy Martinet, Adobe’s vice president of marketing and communications, writes in a blog post. “AI isn’t taking the wheel — it’s enhancing the process. Adobe’s creative AI tools are here to help spark ideas, speed up workflows, and make your wildest concepts possible. Think of it as a creative sidekick that helps you do more of what you love, faster.”
An AI photographer, Finn specializes in blending the real world with the artificial. According to his website, “his groundbreaking work in AI photography captures moments within fabricated environments, artfully blurring the lines between physical and digital existence.” With “The Unfinished Film,” he provides a myriad of video clips with little direction—no voiceovers or actors. The only instructions for creators are to generate scenes that tell the story they want to tell about the world.
“I’m excited to see what creators from non-traditional backgrounds will make when those barriers fall away. That’s what The Unfinished Film is about: opening the door for new voices and unexpected perspectives,” the director states.
Creators can download the original sequence onto an Adobe Firefly board to remix it. They can then share it on social media using the #AdobeFirefly hashtag.
“The Unfinished Film’s” debut comes weeks after Adobe released numerous AI updates for Firefly. In June, the company rolled out native iOS and Android apps and added new AI models. And in mid-July, the creative platform introduced a sound effects generator tool. Now that Firefly has matured into a powerful AI tool for creators, Adobe is using The Unfinished Film to showcase its full potential—inviting creative minds to explore how AI can support every step of the storytelling process.
While Adobe frames Firefly as a “creative sidekick”—a familiar narrative in today’s AI marketing—it’s worth acknowledging the deeper implications. Like many generative tools, Firefly has the potential to disrupt the broader creative industry, raising valid concerns about the future of jobs in design, film, and other artistic professions. At the same time, Adobe is positioning itself as a champion of ethical AI: Firefly is trained only on licensed content, avoids using AI-generated material for further model training, and includes content credentials for transparency. More importantly, Adobe is making the case for creative democratization, arguing that with Firefly, storytelling no longer requires technical mastery, just imagination.
The timing of this campaign comes on the same day that Figma, perhaps Adobe’s chief digital design rival, had its Initial Public Offering (IPO). Adobe once tried to acquire Figma back in 2022 for $20 billion, only to abandon the deal a year later due to regulatory pressure. Fast forward several years, Figma is now public with a market cap far higher than what Adobe bid for it.