Adobe aims to teach AI, online content skills to 30 million

A new program from Adobe aims to teach 30 million people AI, content creation, and marketing skills by 2030.

It’s an extension of the Adobe Digital Academy, which already trains people for new careers in fields like digital marketing, user experience design, and data science. The new program, announced Monday at the Adobe MAX conference, will expand the Academy to offer skills the company says are increasingly relevant to a wide array of current and future professionals.

“We think there’s an urgent need, but also a massive opportunity, as AI is transforming the way that people work and the type of jobs they’ll have,” says Stacy Martinet, Adobe’s vice president of marketing strategy and communications. “We want AI to bridge the digital divide, not further it.”

People will be able to access the course content free through Adobe Express and the creativity platform Behance, and the company is also working with the online learning platform Coursera to offer paid certificate programs built around the Adobe-developed course material, Martinet says.

Adobe plans to fund scholarships to make sure the Coursera certificates are broadly accessible, and the company is also working with nonprofits like the Girl Scouts and DECA—a business and marketing program for young people—to make the coursework and Adobe Express available to participants and get local program leaders trained to teach it.

“We want to make sure that emerging professionals from all backgrounds can carve our their place in the new workplace,” Martinet says.

Courses will include material on using AI to create content from video thumbnails to visual effects around text—and doing so ethically, including paying attention to issues around intellectual property. They’ll also cover skills around creating content for social media, digital marketing, and image creation and editing. The course material, which will include video instruction and follow-up work, will generally emphasize Adobe Express, a creativity app that offers some features for free, and will be accessible through a phone, tablet, or computer with a web browser.

Martinet says she’s optimistic that the certificates issued through Coursera will be valued by prospective employers, and young people learning the material through the nonprofit partnership programs will be able to add it to their resumés—or put the knowledge to work directly if they have a small business or creative economy gig of their own to promote.

“No matter your function, we’re all communicating more visually, and so you have to be able to stand out,” she says. “And everyone’s increasingly a marketer, whether that’s for their own company, their side hustle, their project, their passion, their volunteerism.”

The new material will also be taught through bootcamps like ones Adobe already operates in collaboration with General Assembly, where Adobe works to find graduates jobs internally or at other businesses. And Martinet says she hopes the collaborations with Coursera and various nonprofits will help bring in interested learners.

“The NGO ecosystem is pretty massive, and that’s how we will reach people where they are, in the communities where they live and learn,” she says.