Adobe added generative AI editing to Project Indigo, its experimental iPhone camera app, in a version 1.1 update released on July 20, 2026. The new AI Playground suite runs on Google's Nano Banana model rather than Adobe's own Firefly — an unusual choice for a company that has spent two years marketing Firefly as the responsible, commercially safe alternative for creative generative AI.
Indigo launched in 2025 as a computational photography app aimed at recreating an SLR-like look on the iPhone, with manual controls for focus, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance. The AI Playground update reframes it as an editing surface too. Access is free during the test, with no sign-on required, but rolling out to only a small percentage of Indigo users over the next few weeks.
The tooling is split into four sections. Styles applies preset generative filters, turning photos into illustrations or changing lighting. Object Editing removes people and background distractions and fills the gaps, similar to Google's Magic Eraser. Photo Guidance uses AI to critique your shots and suggest reshoots. Custom Edit is a free-form prompt box that lets users describe edits in detail, including stacking changes on top of a Styles preset.
“Our goal is to learn how people use GenAI-powered editing. Depending on its success we may extend the experiment, or expand the user pool, or run follow-on experiments.”— Marc Levoy, Adobe fellow
Key facts
- 01Adobe's Project Indigo camera app added an AI Playground suite in its version 1.1 update on July 20, 2026.
- 02The generative features run on Google's Nano Banana model, not Adobe's own Firefly.
- 03AI Playground includes four sections: Styles, Object Editing, Photo Guidance, and Custom Edit.
- 04Free access is being tested with a small percentage of Indigo users over the next few weeks, with a paid tier planned if uptake holds.
- 05Adobe says C2PA Content Credentials support is still being added; Nano Banana already applies Google's SynthID watermark.
Marc Levoy, the Adobe fellow leading the project, said each section contains "multiple buttons or toggles, which trigger GenAI with prompts we have engineered for them." Pressing a button a second time typically yields a slightly different result. Adobe is starting with Nano Banana but says it may switch or add model support over time — leaving open the possibility that Firefly slots in later.
The decision to launch on a Google model is the notable part. Nano Banana is Google's image model, and Google has been aggressive about pushing it into third-party surfaces. For Adobe, plugging a rival's model into a first-party app suggests either that Firefly's image editing capabilities aren't yet where the Indigo team needs them, or that Adobe is willing to A/B test against its own stack to see what users actually reach for.
It also puts Adobe on the other side of a debate it usually leads. Firefly launched with heavy emphasis on training data provenance and C2PA Content Credentials, the metadata standard Adobe co-authored for labeling AI-generated content. Indigo's AI Playground currently ships without C2PA on generated edits. Levoy said the team is working to add it, and noted that Nano Banana already stamps outputs with Google's invisible SynthID watermark.
Levoy framed the transparency gap as a shared responsibility rather than a technical fix. The line reads defensively coming from Adobe, which has spent years positioning Content Credentials as the answer to exactly this question.
“Whether the edits you apply are 'fair' or 'misleading' depend on what you do, who you share the images with, and how you present them.”— Marc Levoy, Adobe fellow
The pivot is a sharp turn from Indigo's launch pitch. The Verge's Allison called the original app a "camera app built by camera nerds for camera nerds" — manual controls, natural output, minimal computational trickery. AI Playground drops generative fill, style transfer, and text-prompted editing into that same shell. Levoy hinted at the direction from the start, describing Indigo's debut as "the beginning of a journey" toward integrated mobile capture and AI editing.
The commercial logic is straightforward. If the feature proves popular, Levoy said, Adobe will eventually offer a paid version. Adobe already sells generative credits inside Photoshop and Lightroom; a mobile capture-to-edit loop with paid AI passes fits the same model, and Indigo gives Adobe a direct-to-consumer surface that doesn't require a Creative Cloud subscription to test.
The open question is whether Nano Banana stays. Adobe running a controlled experiment on a competitor's model gives it hard data on what edits users actually want before committing Firefly engineering to match. If Firefly's next image release closes the gap, expect the model swap to be quiet — and expect Content Credentials to arrive at the same time. Until then, Adobe is shipping a camera app whose most interesting features are powered by Google, and that is the more revealing story than the features themselves.
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