A creative technology split screen is emerging — and it’s widening fast. Commercial AI platforms, ad managers, and marketing services firms such as Amazon, Meta, Pencil, and WPP are racing to launch self-serve creative, production, and activation tools. Mark Zuckerberg’s “give us your credit card and we’ll take care of the rest” and Sam Altman’s claim that “AI does 95% of what agencies do” have become rallying cries for this movement.

To diversify revenue and attract new client types, marketing services, big tech, and AI platforms are rolling out self-serve offerings tailored to small-to-midmarket businesses and downstream enterprise needs. Over the past six months, several new or enhanced self-serve AI tools have hit the market:

  • WPP Open Pro empowers enterprise and SMB clients to manage content creation and activation across business lines. It’s a streamlined version of WPP Open and marks a shift from WPP’s service approach.
  • Figma Weave adds native AI creation via its acquisition of Weavy, expanding Figma’s capabilities from ideation to production.
  • Canva Creative Operating System enables users to design, collaborate, publish, and optimize marketing with Canva’s models, templates, and analytics.
  • Amazon Creative Studio equips advertisers with AI tools to build video and display ads, leveraging Amazon’s audience insights.
  • Adobe GenStudio and Express integrate third-party models like Gemini, Imagen, GPT, Flux, Runway, Veo, and Firefly for richer image and video production.
  • Google Pomelli helps SMBs create social campaigns by establishing brand context and generating marketing concepts.
  • Pencil Pro offers self-serve tools for ideation, production, and measurement, with model aggregation, brand compliance, and performance tracking.

Adobe Bucks The Self-Service Trend With Firefly Foundry

Last week at Adobe MAX 2025, Adobe broke from the self-serve pack by launching Adobe Firefly Foundry, a managed service that deep-trains domain-specific AI models for enterprises. While demand for brand-compliant AI outputs remains high, most vendors offer only surface-level solutions. Adobe’s previous Firefly Custom Models allowed users to upload style guides via retrieval augmented generation. Firefly Foundry goes further — setting itself apart because it:

  • Trains bespoke models with enterprise IP. Adobe assigns a team of ML and AI experts to help clients identify, translate, and train proprietary data into custom models. Pricing reflects project scope, expert count, and timeline.
  • Scales from single execution to ecosystem governance. Foundry-trained models support brand, style, and character consistency across content, advertising, owned properties, and product experiences — ideal for media, retail, and CPG firms.
  • Supports multimodal inputs and outputs. Unlike Firefly Custom Models, Foundry handles images, video, audio, vector, and 3D formats, enabling rich media outputs for advertising, entertainment, and digital experiences.

Place Emotion In The Code

Firefly Foundry launched quietly compared to Adobe’s GenStudio updates and Express AI assistant. Yet it delivers a powerful reminder: Creativity starts with people. Foundry elevates the human element in AI development — placing emotion in the code.

Marketers and advertisers should look past the tech hype and focus on what drives creativity:

  • Talent fuels originality. People — not platforms — generate compelling ideas. Powerful, compelling, cathartic ideas come from within, whether from designers, writers, machine learning-scientists, or engineers. “Human creativity brings imperfection — and that’s where originality is born,” says Ronald Ng, global chief creative officer of MRM. Foundry’s expert-led model reinforces this truth.
  • Brand defines differentiation. Your brand is the promise, the idea, and the IP that sets you apart. It’s not what customers buy; rather, it’s what they buy into. With 85% of S&P value tied to intangibles, Foundry’s focus on training brand IP reflects this importance.
  • Culture shapes relevance. Businesses operate within culture, not outside it. Bud Light, Cracker Barrel, and Target show us this truth. Foundry’s teams train models with cultural context, ensuring that outputs resonate with real-world audiences.

AI creative development is accelerating. Forrester can help you keep pace. If you’re a Forrester client and want to explore creative technologies and services, set up a session with me to dive deeper.