SVP at Adobe Express: Why AI Content Doesn't Get Views | Govind Balakrishnan

**Marina Mogilko** (0:00)
Some content gets promoted by social media, it gets admired, and some content just stinks. What's the difference?

**Govind Balakrishnan** (0:08)
Our bar for what we are willing to consume as content is actually growing up.

**Marina Mogilko** (0:13)
This is Govind Balakrishnan. He runs Adobe Express, and Adobe put it straight into Microsoft Copilot. 350 million people now have his tool inside the apps they already use.

**Govind Balakrishnan** (0:23)
I find that a number of creators are essentially just using AI to create content, but not spending the time to bring their own voice into it.

**Marina Mogilko** (0:34)
The best content still takes a lot of time, even with AI. What advice would you give them as someone who's been in the industry for 20 years?

**Govind Balakrishnan** (0:40)
I would say to start with, embrace the change that's happened. The way you create content, the world has changed. And then...

**Marina Mogilko** (0:49)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Silicon Valley Girl and welcome to CAN. We're here at Adobe with Govind, who's running Adobe Express and does a lot of cool things at Adobe. I'm really excited to talk to you about the future of creativity. What designers should be thinking about when it comes to planning their career in five years? What should creators be thinking about when they're using a lot of AI tools to create content? So my first question is, we all got access to these amazing tools, but some content gets promoted by social media, it gets admired, and some content just stanks.
What's the difference?

**Govind Balakrishnan** (1:28)
I think if you really think about it, I mean, what's changed quite recently is that everyone now has access to tools and capabilities that helps them be creative. For the longest time, creativity was limited by the tools and the need to be proficient in those tools before you could actually create content.
Now, we are in that phase where everyone has the ability to create content, but the difference between content that succeeds and the ones that don't is really, it really comes down to the human element that goes into the content. So when we look at content that succeeds, we find that the creators who focus more on a distinct point of view, a clear visual identity and a voice that their users trust, the people who focus on bringing those elements into their creativity, the ones that are actually standing out. If all you're doing is creating content using AI and just putting it out there without essentially bringing your voice into it, then chances are it's not going to really stand out. It's not going to be successful.

**Marina Mogilko** (2:35)
How do you learn it? So I understand telling my own story when it comes to just talking to a camera. When it comes to creating something visual, how do you learn this taste? Because what actually matters these days a lot is taste.
And I don't think I have great taste. I have designers on my team. I have a stylist because it just doesn't come naturally to me. Is there a way I can learn it so that I create visual assets that blow people away?

**Govind Balakrishnan** (3:02)
Yeah, I think a lot of it comes on to knowing what your voice is. What do you stand for, right? What's your unique sort of taste as you put it? What unique sauce do you have that will make the story, the visual, the creative that you're working on stand out? Because at the end of the day, we all have our own visual identity, right? And the key and the trick is to find ways to pull that out and have that surface in the content that you're creating. So with a tool like Adobe Express, for instance, or Firefly for that matter, we are giving you a number of controls to bring your own taste into the picture, into the conversation, right?
You can either use the granular controls that we have, or you can use it by filters, by controls, by fonts, by colors, and all that. But we are now also surfacing the AI assistant in the tool.

**Marina Mogilko** (3:59)
So it's in beta. I clicked it yesterday, it's still.

**Govind Balakrishnan** (4:02)
Exactly. And what it does is it actually, it was as of a couple of months back, we gave you the ability to enter a prompt and have it generate content for you. It can be an image, it can be a design, it can be a presentation as the case maybe. But we have taken it further to make it conversational.
And through that conversational interface, you're essentially speaking with the tool, with the application to get it to build or create exactly what it is that you're trying to create. So that your unique taste and your unique voice comes through.