Adobe: 87% of AI Creators Report Business Growth

What did Adobe's 2026 Creators' Toolkit Report find?

Adobe's 2026 Creators' Toolkit Report, released June 16, found that 87% of creators who use creative AI say it has accelerated the growth of their business or audience. Three-quarters of those creators now describe creative AI as integrated or essential to how they work. The report builds on Adobe's inaugural 2025 survey, which found 86% of global creators were already using creative generative AI.

Creative generative AI is a category of AI models designed specifically to support creative expression — helping creators ideate, generate, and edit content such as images, video, audio, and design.

How does the 2026 report compare to the 2025 findings?

The 2025 report surveyed over 16,000 creators across the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, South Korea, Japan, India, and Australia, conducted with The Harris Poll in September 2025. Adobe partnered with The Harris Poll on both editions.

Who is gaining ground among creators?

The 2026 report points to a split in the creator market. Among creators who say it is harder to stand out than a year ago, 53% blame the sheer quantity of content and 42% say AI-generated work makes it harder for distinctive voices to surface.

At the same time, 58% say their ability to compete with larger teams or studios feels stronger since using creative AI. And 85% believe the work they create with AI still reflects their unique voice.

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As we read the data, the clearest signal is that adoption is no longer the dividing line — how creators apply the tools is.

Does AI actually speed up creative work?

Speed gains are real but incomplete. Adobe found that 93% of creators say creative AI helps them produce content faster. However, 57% say their AI outputs typically require moderate or extensive editing before they are ready to share.

Creators also said they would use time saved on AI tasks for learning new creative skills (22%) or spending more time on higher-level creative ideas and direction (21%).

What do creators want from agentic AI?

Agentic AI refers to AI tools that can carry out multi-step tasks with more independence than standard generative tools. Creators are open to it, but with clear limits.

• 85% say the final creative decision should always remain with the creator
• 44% want the ability to review, edit, or undo at any point
• 37% want transparency into what the agent is doing and why
• 34% want clear limits on the data and tools the agent can access

This mirrors findings from the 2025 report, where 70% of creators said they were optimistic or excited about agentic AI's potential, while still wanting human-in-the-loop control.

Where do trust and ownership stand?

Disclosure and copyright remain unsettled. Adobe found that 75% of creators believe their audience can already tell when creative AI was meaningfully involved in their work. Yet only 49% say they always or often disclose AI use, while 18% say they rarely or never do.

On ownership, 90% of creators say it is important to be able to obtain copyright protection for work created with creative AI assistance. U.S. Copyright Office guidance, however, still requires meaningful human authorship — the mere provision of prompts is not sufficient for protection, according to Forbes's coverage of the report.

What are the top barriers to adopting new AI tools?

From the 2025 report, which established the baseline for these trends, creators cited three main barriers to adopting new creative AI tools:

• High cost — 38%
• Unreliable output quality — 34%
• Uncertainty about how the AI model was trained — 28%

Additionally, 69% of creators expressed concern about their content being used to train AI without permission. These concerns carry forward into the 2026 edition's discussion of trust.

Builders tracking how AI is reshaping creative workflows may also want to follow how AI traffic monetization is evolving on the infrastructure side, or how AI coding tools are creating parallel pressures for developer platforms. The broader question of who captures value from AI-generated output also connects to debates covered in Goldman Sachs's AI warning on market dynamics.

Adobe's 2026 Creators' Toolkit Report was published on June 16, 2026, and is available via Adobe's newsroom.