After spending time at Adobe MAX this year, one announcement stood out for small business owners looking to level up their marketing: the introduction of Adobe Express’s new AI Assistant. I recently sat down with Parimal Deshpande, who leads global product marketing for Adobe Express and Creative Cloud, to unpack what this update really means for entrepreneurs who juggle design, promotion, and operations all at once.

Over the past few years, Adobe Express has grown from a simple design app into a complete creative platform for non-designers—people who need professional-looking graphics, ads, and social posts without spending hours learning complicated software. The new AI Assistant, announced at MAX, pushes that even further. It promises conversational creation and editing—so instead of hunting through menus or endlessly tweaking templates, you can describe what you want and refine it in real time.

In our interview, I asked Parimal how these updates translate into tangible benefits for small businesses. We discussed how Express helps owners stand out in a world of look-alike templates, how Firefly AI keeps content “safe for commercial use,” and how built-in brand kits, ad integrations, and one-click resizes can save hours of repetitive work. For small teams who need to get from concept to content in minutes, this conversation offers insight into where creative tools are heading next—and how to make them work for you.

Leland McFarland: All right, so why don’t we start by introducing yourself and uh what you do and then maybe talk a little bit about uh Adobe Express.

Parimal Deshpande: Great. So my name is uh Parimal. I lead Express uh product marketing uh in a global role. And uh I I like to describe my job as just bringing the best of what Express has to um all kinds of audiences, uh including the small business owners. So excited to be here with you. Some…

Leland McFarland: So, Adobe Express, they they came out with some um, well, you know, at least, you know, one really big um announcement, you know, for for uh at at Adobe Max. Uh want to let us know what it is?

Parimal Deshpande: Yes. Uh before that, maybe I’ll just take 30 seconds to explain what is Express and the kind of…

Leland McFarland: Yeah, go for it.

Parimal Deshpande: …the the vision behind it, right? What we found is uh for all kinds of businesses, including small business owners, uh there is a need for a a design and a creative tool that can help them, you know, grow their business ultimately. And it has to be very accessible, easy to use, and uh brings the best of Adobe. We felt that’s a big opportunity for Adobe because yes, we are known for the flagship products, uh but why not bring the best of those products into one easy-to-use tool or an app that anyone can create uh promotional content, marketing content, you know, small business content and accessible wherever they are. Could be desktop, could be mobile, uh iPhone, Android, and it’s a freemium product. So they can start free and at some stage if you want to get more, you can always go to the paid plan. So that’s the kind of vision for Express and uh we’ve had really good momentum with the small business owners. Now to answer your question, the other exciting thing we just announced and it’s a big announcement we just made uh yesterday was we announced for the first time ever all new AI assistant for Adobe Express. Now, why this is a game changer and why why why all customers we’ve been talking to are really like this is this is the right um uh major feature to announce is because what we’ve heard is templates are helpful. Yes, people went from the blank canvas to the templates, but what we hear especially from small business owners is that if you just use templates, your business looks like everyone else’s business. And that’s a problem for a small business owner. You ultimately want to differentiate yourself if you’re, you know, uh from from the from the others. And what, and this is where AI assistant uh comes in. It makes something that is simple to use even simpler, number one. Number two is yes, you can prompt. A lot of AI assistants can also prompt, but the the game changer here is you can prompt and edit. So it’s the prompt, you know, anything and edit everything, which is powerful because sometimes people don’t quite know what exactly they want and prompting is still a skill, it’s a language that is still evolving for all of us. So the hybrid combination of prompting and editing is a game changer. And behind the scenes, the way we have done this is it’s very content aware. So the AI engine knows when you say something like change a t-shirt or change this, it knows what you mean the object. And so it’s very precise. So it gives you the best of prompting, so makes it simple, and uh it also lets you edit when you want to just take it over, right? And then the uh the last thing I’ll say about AI assistant is it’s powered by Firefly AI, which is safe for commercial use. And that is important for small business owners because you want to use AI that is not trained on other people’s IP. You want to use AI that is ethically right, it’s trained on the content that you have licensed the rights to. And that safeguards your business from potential uh trouble down the line. And so we are really happy to say that uh the AI that powers Adobe Express is safe for commercial use.

Leland McFarland: How? So where I I I mean you got to train it on something. So what do you train all of these?

Parimal Deshpande: We have, we have a massive like millions, millions of like Adobe stock content that we have licensed to that we pay creatives for and we compensate them fairly for that. And that is what we train it on.

Leland McFarland: Okay. So they’re not going to potentially go after people for, you know, utilizing…

Parimal Deshpande: No. No, I mean, that’s the whole idea. So, uh, it’s a bit of a buzzword, is safe for commercial use, and this is what I say just to explain what that means for people, right? Is ultimately everybody wants to be treated fairly, right? Creatives also want to be treated fairly. So, as a creative, you don’t want your content to be trained by an AI and you don’t get compensated for it. So we don’t do that, right? So we have a huge collection of excellent high quality uh stock content, whether it’s photos, videos, gifs, you know, fonts, all kinds of things. And they’re really high quality because we have to stand by the Adobe quality. And we that’s that’s our contribution to all our customers is that whatever you get, it’s not just simple, but it’s also Adobe quality. And the kicker is that it’s all um uh AI that is trained on content we have licensed to. And therefore it’s safe for commercial use.

Leland McFarland: All right. So the uh press release that you put out uh talks about from concept to content in minutes. Uh can you share uh an example of how a small business might be able to use uh the assistant uh for real world projects, say social post, flyer or product demo?

Parimal Deshpande: Yeah. So you have to understand what makes a small business a small business owner? What’s unique challenges and opportunities for a small business owner? It’s really starts there. If you if you summarize, a small business owner has limited resources, not necessarily a lot of specialization, right? Limited resources and has to wear multiple hats. And the person could be a small business owner, also marketer, also salesperson, also might be uh, you know, actually doing the work itself. So so, and then time is limited. So there’s a lot of stresses, time is limited, resources are limited, and the skills are limited. Um, so the real world example for that would be, okay, given this constraint, like what are the kind of things they do and what is ultimately the opportunity? Ultimately, the opportunity is for everyone wants to grow their business. That’s why it’s called a small business. They have to grow their business. And they have to do so in a way that uh makes it authentic for them, helps them differentiate their product, their brand, their service from the 10 others who who are also trying to do the same thing. And uh so in practical terms, that means use cases like you want to create a logo, right? That stands out. You want to create a a flyer that stands out. You want to create social media that drives more eyeballs and that gets more followers because these are all things that are ultimately going to bring more audience and more customers to your small business. So, so, so from that perspective, Adobe Express works on desktop and and mobile, uh iPhone and Android, so it’s very accessible. They can start with the freemium product if they’d like to. Premium is also uh commercially safe to use. And you can start there and start creating all these use cases. And uh AI assistant will make it even easier. You can start with the template, then you can change that with an AI assistant. You can start with an AI assistant and then start taking it over with editing. All types of permission combinations are possible. And you will have in minutes something from scratch to completion based on, you know, your your brand aesthetics. If you don’t have a brand, you can create a brand kit in uh in Express. And if you have a brand kit, you can import that. And that way, anything that you create is sort of on brand as well. It looks like everything else you already have created. And consistency is key because that’s ultimately your brand value.

Leland McFarland: So,

Parimal Deshpande: I’d add maybe one more thing that I forgot. That’s a good one too, is the other thing we have seen in small businesses is you can also create ads. Uh, small businesses can create ads. Ads uh up until now often was uh difficult to create and you have to know what you’re creating. It was quite sophisticated to use various ad managers, but what we’ve done with Express is we have built integrations with all the kind of major ad platforms. And what that means is you can create a piece of content, let’s say it’s social. And if you like the piece of content, now you can turn that into an ad very quickly through our ad integrations, whether it’s with uh TikTok, it’s with YouTube, now Amazon, you know, Meta, and things like that. So a lot of the ad creation is in the creative. How how good is the creative? And because it’s Adobe content, often it’s a higher quality bar and therefore it just performs better. And it’s easy to use. So now anyone can create an ad uh in minutes to drive uh the business forward.

Leland McFarland: Is there integration? I I think I remember seeing like the reach and stuff like that on the uh on the uh demo that was on the keynote. So is there like integrations and could I do like AB testing and?

Parimal Deshpande: Yes, you can. Yes. So there are integrations in the uh uh with the ad managers and Express, these are add-ons that you can add depending on which platform you want to create the ad for. And then it can tell you, you know, what it’s going to perform before you actually publish, potentially what the reach is and what you could change before you actually publish.

Leland McFarland: Okay.

Parimal Deshpande: So that’s very powerful.

Leland McFarland: What what other kind of integrations does it have?

Parimal Deshpande: LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one where if you have a small business that is more geared towards uh business professionals as a service, let’s say you’re a consulting shop, your audience is going to be on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is uh is a big partner, very keen to uh to grow this because they see that uh people who can create businesses who can create ads just, you know, uh gets the word out faster. And now you’ve made this easy. So it’s ads made easy, just like anything else made easy.

Leland McFarland: So, what about small business owners who are just maybe maybe a little scared of doing a prompt, you know, they got they they’re thinking in their head, okay, I got to make it really good. What would you say for those people?

Parimal Deshpande: I’d say, um, it is a lot easier than you think it is. And sometimes you just have to take the first step forward and not worry about getting perfection. As soon as you take this first step forward, just go check out Express and create something simple. Create something simple and you will find how delightful it is. It is based on whatever use case you want to create. You can create a flyer, you can create a poster, you can create a QR code, you can create a logo, whatever it is that you want to create, take the first step forward. What we found is as soon as you take the first step forward, the creative confidence shoots up. Right? Seeing is, you know, just by doing it, you believe. And and then the second, third, fourth steps are incredibly easier. And in that process, you know, play with it. Um, I would just say, take the pressure off, play with it. It’s a tool that is going to help you grow your business, you know? So, go for it. And uh that’s what we hear is a lot of the initial hesitation is is sometimes almost in the head. Once you take the leap of faith, the first step is all that matters.

Leland McFarland: Okay. So, Express includes uh millions of assets and templates. Uh how does the AI assistant help users find the right look and or layout faster, especially if they aren’t sure where they want to start?

Parimal Deshpande: You can often start with uh a template for inspiration if you’d like, by just searching for templates. There’s millions of templates. So, no matter what types. So, for example, Halloween is coming up right now. A lot of small business owners will often do seasonal sales and promotions to tap into the customer psychology. There’s Halloween, there’s Black Friday, there’s holidays, there’s December, right? So there templates that are culturally relevant, that are inspired by all these themes, for example. So you can start with that as as a theme, right? And then from there, if you have uh if you have a brand kit you already have used, you can import that and make it like that. If you don’t, you can set up a brand kit, and you can start there. Let’s say, you know, you like a certain look, or maybe you want to refresh your brand, you set up a brand kit, and then make assets that are very similar. And then the other uh magical part about Express is that it can resize. One of the delightful features coming think think about how easy it is to use is what we found is when you like a design, right? When you like something, okay, you created a flyer for Thanksgiving, let’s say. But you have 40% off on your small business order. Great. If you like it, now you want to share this with as many people as possible with as many platforms as possible. You’ll often have your Instagram account, or a Facebook account, or a TikTok account, or a YouTube account, or whatever account that you are promoting your small business on. With one click, you can resize that asset into 100 plus different sizes. Uh, YouTube thumbnail, you know, all kinds of things in just one click. It’s magical.

Leland McFarland: Nice.

Parimal Deshpande: Yeah. It saves a lot of time.

Leland McFarland: It saves a lot of time.

Parimal Deshpande: It saves a lot of time. And the the other thing we have seen as a pattern is when you like something, you can make copies and start changing it. So if you like your poster for Thanksgiving, well, clearly you like it because it’s your brand, you like some colors, it makes you what your business is about. It it is unique to you. If it speaks to you, you can now make copies and only change it, change elements that you need to change. For example, you can turn the Black Friday poster or a flyer into a Thanksgiving, uh sorry, into a New Year’s, uh Halloween, Cyber Monday, spring sale, summer sale, what have you.

Leland McFarland: Great. All right, so on on branding, you mentioned um, briefly, the uh brand kits and and and all that. Can you kind of go into a little bit more and how that can really help small businesses kind of um stay on brand and and also how maybe the person who’s kind of making the brand kit wouldn’t necessarily use it, but maybe like their employees. It’s like handing out…

Parimal Deshpande: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good question. There are two two questions you asked me there. What does what does what does setting of a brand kit mean, you know? And the second is like the collaboration, the partnership between various teams, right? On the first one, what is a brand kit ultimately, right? And the brand kit is simply how do you express your business? What is the logo? What is the colors? What are the fonts? Uh the brand elements together they make a brand kit. Um, most small business owners have have an idea for a brand kit, even though that term brand might be a bit more marketing term, but they know what they are. There’s a logo for whatever small business you have. That’s uh So you have a brand kit. Can you just create that in Express that would be set up for all future users? So so it’s a simple process that we allow in the in in Express to create your own brand kit. And now the question is, how do you scale it internally, right? What we have found is um, often there’s a marketing or a brand person, right, who will set this up. And then you want this to be self-served by various people in the company, right? So that they can all create this. And what you can do is you can create templates that include the brand kits and you can lock down certain elements. So if it’s a flyer for um for uh Halloween, let’s say, you’re going to lock down the logo, you’re going to lock down the type of font you can use because that’s part of the brand kit. And then you can give it to your employees to say, you know what, uh remix this. And the things that are locked down cannot be changed. The things that can be changed, like text can easily be changed. So Halloween can then become Black Friday, and then become uh Christmas, you know, uh and those can be changed. And that’s the collaboration piece we do. The other scenario we also do is often small business owners have an agency they work with, a small agency they work with, right? They may not do the initial setup in house. And we see so many examples here with our ambassadors is these are small agencies, one or two persons, small agency, but they work with small business owners uh to serve them. And so the agency, which is essentially an external brand person, can set up these brand kits for the client, and then the client can self-serve these things all day long without needing to every time pay for the agency. So the cost goes down. So there’s a big cost saving, and there’s a big uh uh empowerment. Why not use our people and a self-serve tool, and you can do this in house very easy.

Leland McFarland: So, are there any ways to ask for permission to go out of the locks? So, say for instance, you block down um fonts, but it’s Halloween and I want to use this slimy font that is not in the brand kit. Is there a way that I could then like ask for permission to be able to use…

Parimal Deshpande: Oh, yes. So, uh Express is by design very collaborative. In fact, collaboration is built into Express. So every time a brand person can create a brand kit, obviously they have access to the files. We can request, you know, uh you can have soft locks, for example, you can have hard locks and you can have soft locks. Hard locks are things that you cannot change. Soft locks are things that we don’t recommend you change, but it’s okay if you change, right? Uh so there are things that you can do. Plus we can collaborate, right? We are commenting and back and forth in terms of, “Hey, I like this, but actually on second thoughts, I like, I want to change this.” And then it’s a conversation between the brand person and and every everyone in the company. It’s very flexible in that way. It it really does, yeah. Uh the other thing I’ll just say is sometimes based on how big the small business is, you can have multiple brands. Right? So if you have as a small business owner, if you have multiple brands, you can have multiple brand kits also. So there and then there are concept of projects within that. So projects, certain people have access to projects, and that way the brand and the team people working on brand A versus brand B can have two different projects completely. It’s very flexible and it scales according to the needs of small business owners.

Leland McFarland: Nice. All right. So for small business owners who may feel intimidated by AI tools, I mean, it’s everywhere and they are getting bombarded left and right and it almost feels like every week you have to learn something new. Yeah. Um, what would you say to convince them that this that Adobe Express is approachable?

Parimal Deshpande: Um, I’d say I completely understand the sentiment. If you look back, AI came into our lives three years back, give or take. If you look back three years back, none of us had much knowledge about using AI. And look here we are, right? So sometimes it’s give yourself more credit than you think, right? Uh, give yourself more credit. You have, to all our customers, I would say, you already are well on the path of learning AI already in just very short three years. Right? Um, second is I would say frame it as an opportunity for what it can do for you. Right? And when you just take the first step, just take the first step, uh, you will find, “Oh my God, like all the mundane things that I didn’t like to do, it can now do it for me.” And therefore, then I can focus on things that I really care about doing that only a human being can do, right? The creativity that uh that inspires us all, that makes us human, that is going to come from human beings. Thinking about your business, you need some head space to think about your business. That’s the number one problem we hear from small business owners is they’re always like drowning, wearing multiple hats. So now this gives you space to think about your business by offloading things that AI can help you with. And uh about Adobe Express, if you notice, uh it’s very flexible, right? You can use it when you want on your terms. If you just rather do simple editing, that’s fine, too. There’s an option, you know, there’s an option to use it when you want, and uh when you’re ready for it. So it’s not going to be forced on you, but it’s very, very powerful, and we encourage you at least take the first step.

Leland McFarland: So, what advice would you give small businesses uh just starting to integrate AI into their creative process? Uh where should they begin with Adobe Express?

Parimal Deshpande: I’d say, first of all, I would just say, uh, definitely understand the risks of AI that is not safe for commercial use. And I say that because choice is a good thing for customers. There are lots of choices, but they’re not all good choices. So I would just say, first of all, please read whatever AI you’re going to use, read what it’s going to be trained on. This is where we feel good about Express, both because we care about small businesses, and also it’s the right ethical thing to do, is to make sure the AI is trained on content and you have rights to that content. So that’s the first step. Second is start, take your first step on uh on your desktop or your uh mobile device of choice. It’s uh Express works wherever you are, and uh it’s a free product. Try free, give it a shot. Create just one thing with AI or with the template, just start somewhere and you’ll see what magical things it can do for you. And then after that, you will not stop using it.

Leland McFarland: All right, looking ahead, crystal ball. What’s what’s what’s in store for the future? How do you see uh tools like AI assistant uh shaping the future of small business marketing um over the next few years?

Parimal Deshpande: I’d say the small business marketing AI will help them, and Express tools, and Express AI is part of Adobe Express. So easy-to-use tools that are delightful to use and high quality and commercially safe will help them unlock even more opportunities than they would have otherwise today. Uh it is a force multiplier. It is literally your hidden superpower for small business owners particularly because of the constraints that a small business owner has, that you want a creative tool that is there to help you uh offload things that you’d rather not do. And then even when you do them, they’re on brand and help you grow your business. Uh I see that future just, you know, multiplying. I also see people really appreciating how the value of being unique and having a unique authentic voice and your brand show up as a small business owner. So you don’t look like everyone else. And therefore, not using templates that everyone else is using. So this is an opportunity for you to get beyond your templates, beyond the templates to create something that is truly speaks to your business.

Leland McFarland: Nice. Well, that’s what I have for you. Um, thank you for your time.

Parimal Deshpande: Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Leland McFarland: All right.

Looking back on that discussion, it’s clear that Adobe Express isn’t just keeping pace with creative trends—it’s reshaping how small businesses approach design and marketing. What struck me most is how approachable it has become. Between the new AI Assistant and Express’s expanding library of templates, stock assets, and brand management features, small business owners no longer have to choose between quality and speed.

If you’re thinking about trying it, start by setting up a brand kit to keep your look consistent. Lock in your logo, fonts, and colors so every post or flyer you make stays on brand. From there, use the AI Assistant to brainstorm and refine campaigns—swap out imagery, adjust tone, or reformat designs without losing control. Once you have content that works, take advantage of Express’s integrations to turn your posts into ads across LinkedIn, Meta, TikTok, and other platforms with just a few clicks.

The most important takeaway for me was Parimal’s emphasis on creative confidence. Small business owners often hesitate to experiment with new tools, but Express seems designed to remove that barrier. The AI handles the heavy lifting, while you stay focused on authenticity and growth. For anyone who walked away from Adobe MAX wondering how AI could realistically fit into their day-to-day marketing, Adobe Express just might be the most practical place to start.

This article, “Interview with Parimal Deshpande – Marketing Executive for Adobe Express & Creative Cloud” was first published on Small Business Trends