Generative AI not working as intended?

Hey everyone,

Up until recently, I was using Photoshop 27.8 (Mac 26.5.1) and everything worked perfectly fine.

The newer Generative Fill and Expand model produces textures that are way too smooth. I’d even call them blurry. And yes, I’m aware of the 1024×1024 px limitation, but this happens even with 100×100 px selection.

Because of that, I’ve been using the old Firefly 1 model from 2023, which, unlike the newer model, works really well for my use case. It handles textures amazingly well. I mainly use it for removing distractions: I select the unwanted object, leave the prompt empty, hit Generate, and Firefly 1 understands perfectly well that the selected area should be removed.

However, something seems to have changed starting with version 27.9.

If I leave the prompt empty now, Firefly 1 starts generating completely random objects instead of simply filling/removing the selected area. For example, I had a white T-shirt with some red text on it that I wanted to remove. I selected the text, left the prompt empty, and generated. Instead of removing the text, it generated a teddy bear. Not even as a print on the shirt, but as if someone had placed an actual teddy bear in front of the shirt.

Using a prompt like “remove” somewhat helps, but the results are still noticeably worse than they were in 27.8.

The newer Generative Fill and Expand model actually handles prompt-free generations better, but the overly smooth/blurry textures are still there, so it’s basically unusable for my workflow. It also seems to behave worse than it did in 27.8, although this happens much less frequently than with Firefly 1.

Since Firefly 1 is an old model that presumably isn’t being updated anymore, I’m guessing something changed in the communication between Photoshop and the model itself rather than the model actually changing.

When 27.10 came out, I was hoping this might have been fixed, but unfortunately the behavior is still exactly the same. The same thing also happens in the 27.11 beta.

I wouldn’t mind staying on 27.8, but the latest version introduced the Light Adjustment Layer, which is a complete game changer for my workflow. Unfortunately, I use Firefly 1 much more frequently, so I can’t really justify upgrading when it makes such an important part of my workflow unreliable.

Has anyone else noticed this behavior with Firefly 1, or found a workaround?