AI Is Changing The Economics Of Creativity. Who Benefits?

As Adobe MAX opens in Miami Beach, the creative AI industry is confronting a challenging question. If producing content is getting cheaper, what makes creative work valuable?

AI is making it easier and cheaper, and some would argue more trivial, to produce images, videos and other creative content. But as thousands of creative professionals gather this week in Miami Beach for Adobe MAX 2026, the conversation is moving beyond what generative AI can create toward the economics of how creative work gets done.

For businesses, the implications go well beyond quickly generating images or producing dozens of output variations from a single concept. AI is changing how organizations structure creative teams, allocate budgets, select technology and measure productivity.

The cost of creating content may be falling, but the expense of managing AI, maintaining quality, and getting people to pay attention isn’t necessarily falling along with it. And when AI makes content production increasingly abundant, where does the economic value of creativity shift?

In a conversation ahead of Adobe MAX with Varun Parmar, SVP and GM of GenStudio and Firefly Enterprise at Adobe, Varun shared his insights on how organizations are reconsidering AI investments, why simply automating creative tasks may not deliver the expected returns and how the value of human creativity could change.

The Cost Of AI Is Becoming A Question Of Return

For the past few years, much of the excitement around generative AI has focused on its ability to produce content faster. Organizations experimented with new models, expanded AI access across their teams and explored how to automate work that previously required considerable human effort.

But businesses are starting to pay closer attention to what all this activity costs, and what they are actually getting in return.

“For certain tasks, it’s better for the humans to just do it or just a deterministic workflow that you can execute,” Parmar said.