When users first learned of Adobe’s new terms of service (which were quietly updated in February), there was an uproar. Adobe told users it could access their content “via automated and manual methods” and use “techniques such as machine learning to improve [Adobe’s] Services and software. Many understood the update to mean the company was forcing users to grant unrestricted access to their work, with the goal of training Adobe’s generative AI, known as Firefly.
On Tuesday evening, Adobe issued a clarification: In an updated version of its terms of service, it committed not to train AI on its users’ content stored locally or in the cloud and gave users the possibility to unsubscribe from content analysis.
Caught in the crossfire when it comes to intellectual property lawsuits, the ambiguous language previously used to update the terms highlights a climate of acute skepticism among artists, many of whom rely too heavily on Adobe for their work. “They’ve already broken our trust,” says Jon Lam, senior writer at Riot Games, referring to how award-winning artist Brian Kesinger discovered that images generated in the style of his art were being sold under his name on the Adobe image site, without its consent. Earlier this month, the estate of the late photographer Ansel Adams publicly chastised Adobe for allegedly selling generative AI knockoffs of his work.
Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief strategy officer, had tried to allay concerns when artists began protesting, clarifying that machine learning referred to the company’s non-generative AI tools – the tool Photoshop’s “Content Aware Fill”, which allows users to seamlessly remove objects in an image. , is one of the many tools made using machine learning. But while Adobe insists that the updated terms do not give the company ownership of the content and that it will never use user content to train Firefly, the misunderstanding has sparked a broader discussion about the company’s market monopoly and how a change like this could threaten artists’ livelihoods. at any time. Lam is one of the artists who still believes that, despite Adobe’s clarifications, the company will use works created on its platform to train Firefly without the creators’ consent.
Nervousness over non-consensual use and monetization of copyrighted works by generative AI models is not new. Early last year, artist Karla Ortiz was able to display images of her work using her name on various generative AI models, an infringement that resulted in a class-action lawsuit against Midjourney, DeviantArt, and Stability AI . Ortiz wasn’t alone: Polish fantasy artist Greg Rutkowski discovered his name was one of the most commonly used prompts in Stable Diffusion when the tool launched in 2022.
As the owner of Photoshop and PDF creator, Adobe has reigned as the industry standard for over 30 years, powering the majority of the creative class. An attempted acquisition of product design company Figma was blocked and abandoned in 2023 over competition concerns over its size.
