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With the end of Sam Altman’s five-day power struggle at OpenAI and his reinstatement, Adobe is gearing up to enhance its generative AI capabilities. According to a report in the Economic Times, Adobe has sent out an internal memo revealing its acquisition of Rephrase, a California-based text-to-video company.
Although the financial details of the acquisition haven’t been disclosed, this move is expected to significantly enhance Adobe’s Creative Cloud products, which have been incorporating generative AI features over the past year. Rephrase will enable Adobe customers to create professional-quality videos using just text.
Rephrase’s CEO, Ashray Malhotra, shared the news on LinkedIn, stating the company had been acquired by a “leading tech giant,” without explicitly mentioning Adobe. He declined to provide further details, citing authorization constraints.
Founded in 2019 by Malhotra, Nisheeth Lahoti, and Shivam Mangla, Rephrase offers a platform called Rephrase Studio. This platform allows users to create professional-looking videos featuring digital avatars within minutes. Users select a video template, choose an avatar and voice, and add their desired content. Once the render button is pressed, the studio syncs the script with the avatar, offering customization options such as resizing the avatar, changing the background, adjusting pauses between words, or adding custom audio.
Over the past four years, Rephrase has attracted over 50,000 customers and raised nearly $14 million from various investors, including Red Ventures and Lightspeed India. The company’s unique selling point is its ability to help businesses and influencers create custom avatars for personalized videos, whether showcasing brand ambassadors or the clients themselves.
With this acquisition, Adobe will integrate Rephrase’s capabilities and team into its operations, enhancing its generative AI video offerings. Ashley Still, senior vice president and general manager for Adobe Creative Cloud, mentioned in an internal memo that Rephrase’s expertise would expand Adobe’s generative video capabilities and deliver more value to customers within Adobe’s leading creative applications.
When questioned by VentureBeat, Adobe declined to comment on the acquisition or how Rephrase’s technology would fit into its existing product lineup. However, an Adobe spokesperson highlighted the company’s history of driving growth through innovation and its continuous search for new talent and technology to create more value for stakeholders.
Adobe has been aggressively advancing its generative AI technology with numerous updates. The company launched Firefly, an AI engine for image generation, which integrated across Creative Cloud products like Photoshop. Firefly allows users to alter images by describing the desired changes. At its recent Max conference, Adobe demonstrated experimental generative AI video features, such as video upscaling, texture changes, and compositing from different clips. While it’s unclear when these features will be officially released, Rephrase’s digital avatar technology appears to be a promising candidate for integration.
Malhotra expressed excitement in his LinkedIn post about the future of generative AI and hinted at new projects on the horizon.
For audio and video professionals, Adobe Creative Cloud remains the premier platform, encompassing major products like Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Character Animator, Animate, and Media Encoder. These tools are widely used by professionals and hobbyists alike to create, edit, and share digital content, contributing to the creation of countless memes, parodies, and viral art that shape online culture.
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