News
UAE NFT Sector Expected To Grow By Over 45% Per Year
Consumers are increasingly interested in the technology, and businesses are taking notice.

The UAE has long been considered a desirable destination for doing business and is now becoming a global hub in the field of NFTs. The non-fungible token market in the United Arab Emirates is expected to grow by 45.5% annually, having already reached an estimated US$982.1 million by the end of last year. By 2028, the sector could reach a staggering $4.75 billion as the new technology continues to be championed by entrepreneurs, businesses, and celebrities.
“Consumers are interested in buying into stories, in buying into experiences. When you’re buying a product, you’re just buying the physical product. But when you are buying an NFT, you’re buying a whole lot of things that are linked with it,” says Arshad Zaheer, Senior Partner at YAAP.
NFTs sit on the blockchain network, meaning ownership and originality can be confirmed, making the technology ideal for artwork, but also relevant for the legal industry and other sectors where authenticity is required.
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The Middle East and Africa region have seen a surge in NFT-related activities. Several innovative NFT marketplaces have also emerged in MENA countries, including the UAE, making it easier for the general public to buy, sell, and trade digital assets.
“From NFT-based startups to cryptocurrency exchanges, several players are entering the UAE NFT market; the presence of several NFT marketplaces has also supported the rise in NFT trading transaction value and volume, the trend expected to gain further momentum over the next three to four years in the UAE,” says Business Wire in a recent report.
As NFTs begin to hit the mainstream, the opportunities presented by the technology are immense and could even rival the explosive rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
News
Adobe Firefly AI Image Generator Comes To Photoshop
The Generative Fill tool will arrive in the app’s tool palette sometime in the second half of this year.

Adobe Photoshop is the latest app to benefit from the explosion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, gaining a new tool called Generative Fill. The company’s AI image generator Firefly benefitted from the new feature in a web-only update back in March, and today, the Generative Fill tool launches in beta for the popular photo editing program.
Generative Fill is a little like a smarter version of Adobe’s existing Content-Aware Fill feature and works within individual Photoshop image layers. The tool can be used to expand the borders of an image (a feature known as outpainting) or to generate entirely new objects, and contains a text prompt to add direction to the AI technology.
Adobe claims its AI is only trained to work on Adobe Stock images, licensed content, and images without copyright restrictions. Generative Fill also supports a system called Content Credentials, which attaches metadata-style attributes to images before they are shared online, informing viewers that content was created or edited with the help of AI.
“By integrating Firefly directly into workflows as a creative co-pilot, Adobe is accelerating ideation, exploration and production for all of our customers,” announced Ashley Still, the senior vice president of Digital Media at Adobe. “Generative Fill combines the speed and ease of generative AI with the power and precision of Photoshop, empowering customers to bring their visions to life at the speed of their imaginations,” she added.
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Generative Fill isn’t yet available in the latest version of Photoshop, but if you’re curious about how the tool works, you can download the desktop beta app or try it out within a module of the Firefly beta. Adobe is still tight-lipped about the exact release date of Generative Fill, but says we can expect the new feature to drop sometime in the second half of 2023.