The IT Nerd

Yesterday, a C level executive tried to put out the fire surrounding the firestorm that Adobe created when changes to their terms of use came to light and made it look like Adobe products were basically spyware. And that Adobe were intent on using customer data to train their AI models.

It now Adobe is taking another crack at trying to make this issue go away via this blog post. I encourage you to read it in full. But here’s the part of it that is most relevant to this discussion:

The focus of this update was to be clearer about the improvements to our moderation processes that we have in place. Given the explosion of Generative AI and our commitment to responsible innovation, we have added more human moderation to our content submissions review processes.

And they also say this:

To be clear, Adobe requires a limited license to access content solely for the purpose of operating or improving the services and software and to enforce our terms and comply with law, such as to protect against abusive content.

Finally they say this:

• Adobe does not train Firefly Gen AI models on customer content. Firefly generative AI models are trained on a dataset of licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content where copyright has expired. Read more here: https://helpx.adobe.com/firefly/faq.html#training-data
• Adobe will never assume ownership of a customer’s work. Adobe hosts content to enable customers to use our applications and services. Customers own their content and Adobe does not assume any ownership of customer work.

Now if this blog post came out at the same time the terms of use were updated, we may not be here talking about it now. And if they didn’t do any of the following, this absolutely would not have been such a huge issue:

• To request support to clarify the terms of use, you had to agree to these terms
• To uninstall the apps because you didn’t like these terms of use, you had to agree to these terms of use anyway.

The fact is Adobe to borrow a U.K. phrase, stuffed this whole thing. They really screwed up how they handled it and burned a whole lot of goodwill in the process. I guarantee that because of how this was handled, a lot of creative professionals are now either looking for alternatives to Adobe products, or have already switched. Will Adobe care about that? They might if it hits their bank account hard enough. I guess the central question is does this make you feel better about Adobe, and will you feel comfortable enough to use their products? Sound off in the comments below with your thoughts.

Yesterday, I posted a story about Adobe changing their terms of use and sparking an uproar about it. At the time I said this:

Adobe could really do itself a favour by clarifying this. Because until they do, people are going to have the impression that Adobe products are basically spyware when in reality they’re likely not. Thus I’ve pinged Adobe over this and if I actually get a response, I’ll post it here.

I said that because Adobe really wasn’t saying anything about this to address this issue. But that changed when Adobe Chief Strategy Officer Scott Belsky responded to the Tweet that started this:

 I encourage you to read the entire Tweet. But The fact that Adobe as of the time that this story is written doesn’t train AI models with customer data isn’t something that inspire any confidence as their terms could allow Adobe to do so in the future.

Now if you read the entire Tweet, Belsky does say that this could be clearer. But he also uses the “everyone else does this” excuse. Which again doesn’t inspire confidence in Adobe. And from what I can tell, this isn’t going over really well on Twitter.

The bottom line is this. Even with this response from a C level executive at Adobe, I have shifted my opinion from “let’s give Adobe a chance to respond because this may not be as bad as it seems” to “Adobe is possibly setting the groundwork to do something suspect with your data in the future.” And I am likely not the only person who is thinking that given how many people are now threatening to dump Adobe products because of this. Maybe Adobe should take that into account and come up with a strategy to address these concerns and put this to bed before their reputation gets damaged beyond repair.

From the “this seems a bit suspect” comes this discovery by Sam Santala about the terms of use for Adobe Photoshop:

Of course this set off a bit of a tizzy on the Internet. And it sounds pretty bad on the surface. But there’s another view to this.

The way this is written, it sounds like it only refers to content that you upload to Adobe. Meaning that stuff that is local is stuff that they don’t have access to. That’s fine. Sort of. There’s also references to looking for things like CSAM and adult material. Now I am a computer nerd and not a lawyer, but that sounds like a cover your a$$ sort of thing to me. There’s also verbiage about using machine learning to improve their products. That’s something that I can see people having issues with as there are people out there who don’t want AI models trained using their stuff.

Adobe could really do itself a favour by clarifying this. Because until they do, people are going to have the impression that Adobe products are basically spyware when in reality they’re likely not. Thus I’ve pinged Adobe over this and if I actually get a response, I’ll post it here.