ADOBE'S HEADACHES

[DerVVulfman]

ADOBE'S NEW TERMS OF SERVICE
AREN'T THE PROBLEM...
ITS THE TRUST

(From DerVVulfman: This is as bad as the Unity Fiasco!)

by Jess Weatherbed

A recent notification from Adobe about a terms of service update caused outrage online once many people — forced to accept the new terms for continued access to its apps and services — interpreted it to mean Adobe was permitting itself free rein to access and use their work to train AI models

Specifically, the notification said Adobe had “clarified that we may access your content through both automated and manual methods” within its TOS, directing users to a section that says “techniques such as machine learning” may be used to analyze content to improve services, software, and user experiences. The update went viral after creatives took Adobe’s vague language to mean that it would use their work to train Firefly — the company’s generative AI model — or access sensitive projects that might be under NDA.

Adobe has now published a blog to address those concerns and assure its users that this isn’t the case. “Our commitments to our customers have not changed,” Adobe said in its statement, affirming that the company doesn’t train Firefly on customer content or assume ownership of a customer’s work. “Firefly generative AI models are trained on a dataset of licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content where copyright has expired.”

A before and after comparison of the TOS update (which you can see below) shows that very little about the policy has actually changed. The inclusion of “machine learning,” particularly, while vague, isn’t new and has been present in the TOS for years. One explanation for this is that variations of AI technology that pre-date Firefly have long been used in tools like Photoshop’s Content-Aware Fill and Lightroom’s Select Subject. Confusingly, however, the updated language within the TOS has actually been live since February, with Adobe having only recently notified users of the change.

Adobe’s chief product officer, Scott Belsky, acknowledged on X that the wording within the notification is “unclear” and said the company’s legal team was working to address concerns about the vague language within the policy. “Adobe has had something like this in TOS for over a decade,” said Belsky. “But trust and transparency couldn’t be more crucial these days.”

Adobe has developed something of an “image” problem as it’s grown over the years, especially among individual creatives who no longer feel the company has their best interests at heart. It’s been criticized for dropping its one-time purchase model in favor of recurring subscriptions and accused of creating a monopoly over the creative software industry — which concerned regulators enough to effectively force the company to abandon its attempt to acquire Figma last year. While similar software is available from other brands like Affinity, Adobe’s is typically considered the “industry standard” and difficult to avoid using in professional environments.

Notably, Adobe has also developed a mountain of generative AI tools and services since introducing its own Firefly model in March 2023, enthusiastically promoting them as a means for people with limited creative experience to quickly produce content at scale. I imagine that sounds very attractive to businesses, but not so much to creative professionals who are anxious about their job security. It’s easy to see why so many feel betrayed by the company, especially when Adobe seemingly struggles to enforce the generative AI policies it introduced to protect them.

That breakdown of trust brings us here. While this viral drama surrounding Adobe’s TOS “update” may blow over, hoards of creatives are watching the company like a hawk. Adobe will have to find an effective way to address those trust issues if it wants independent creators, who have come to expect the worst from the company, to see it as the friend it claims to be rather than a foe.

[Melana]

Now, I am even more glad, I never used their software.

[DerVVulfman]

Adobe overhauls terms of service

to say it won’t train AI on customers’ work

The company will roll out new terms next week that clarify what it can and can’t do with its users’ data.

By  Jess Weatherbed

Adobe is overhauling the terms customers must agree to when using its apps in an effort to win back trust — and clarify that it won’t train AI on their work. The change, announced via a new blog post, comes after a week of backlash from users who feared that an update to Adobe’s terms of service would allow their work to be used for AI training.

The new terms of service are expected to roll out on June 18th and aim to better clarify what Adobe is permitted to do with its customers’ work, according to Adobe’s president of digital media, David Wadhwani.

“We have never trained generative AI on our customer’s content, we have never taken ownership of a customer’s work, and we have never allowed access to customer content beyond what’s legally required,” Wadhwani said to The Verge.

Adobe faced widespread scrutiny from creatives over the last week after its customers were alerted to language in its terms of service update that discussed AI. Customers interpreted Adobe’s vague language to mean the company was allowing itself to freely access and use customers’ work to train Adobe’s generative AI models. That wasn’t the case — and Adobe’s policies around training weren’t changing — but Adobe’s chief product officer, Scott Belsky, acknowledged that the wording was “unclear” and that “trust and transparency couldn’t be more crucial these days.”

Wadhwani says that the language used within Adobe’s TOS was never intended to permit AI training on customers’ work. “In retrospect, we should have modernized and clarified the terms of service sooner,” Wadhwani says. “And we should have more proactively narrowed the terms to match what we actually do, and better explained what our legal requirements are.”

A chunk of the creative community has long-standing beef with Adobe over its alleged industry monopoly, its subscription-based pricing models, and its use of generative AI. The company trained its own Firefly AI model on Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content, and public domain content to avoid some of the ethical concerns surrounding generative AI, but several
artists have found images that reference their work on Adobe’s stock platform — making it hard to trust the protections in place.

“We feel very, very good about the process,” Wadhwani said in regards to content moderation surrounding Adobe stock and Firefly training data but acknowledged it’s “never going to be perfect.” Wadhwani says that Adobe can remove content that violates its policies from Firefly’s training data and that customers can opt out of automated systems designed to improve the company’s service.

Adobe said in its blog post that it recognizes “trust must be earned” and is taking on feedback to discuss the new changes. Greater transparency is a welcome change, but it’s likely going to take some time to convince scorned creatives that it doesn’t hold any ill intent. “We are determined to be a trusted partner for creators in the era ahead. We will work tirelessly to make it so.”

[kyonides]

There's only one healthy conclusion to draw from these articles: they've already let AI process all of those works by now.
Let's be honest, they couldn't have gone too far developing AI stuff with just materials they had created themselves. Just as a not so long forgotten memory of my past once taught me, by the time people finally tells you they won't do something, they're already doing it.

For a large company or corporation to come up with the original announcement AFTER the facts and not before, it requires a certain level of confidence or even overconfidence to do that. Mainly because they've taking huge advantage of people's ignorance. They might not even be truly afraid of their customers' reaction. Especially if they're in charge of such a monopolistic empire.

What will be the next revelation to come in the next few years?
That they've sold all of their findings to the CCP?
Highly likely.

[DerVVulfman]

There's only one healthy conclusion to draw from these articles: they've already let AI process all of those works by now.
Let's be honest, they couldn't have gone too far developing AI stuff with just materials they had created themselves. Just as a not so long forgotten memory of my past once taught me, by the time people finally tells you they won't do something, they're already doing it.

That would be an incorrect legal assessment.

Yes, Adobe's recent TOS suggests it wants permission to all works, likely to permit scraping for AI scraping. But before these terms were present, Adobe had no such power and their clients/customers/users content is flatly and legally protected.

Were it discovered that Adobe had already begun the practice of AI data scraping of un-approved client content before these terms were in place, a severe class-action lawsuit for copyright violations would be filed. And if Adobe has begun this practice, they will have a lot of explaining to do.

[Remi-chan]

I've NEVER trusted adobe and I'm amazed anyone did or still does.

Them scalping for A.I. purposes was about the least surprising thing for them to do. Not many have done the legally correct thing but it is morally correct to pirate adobe products.

They will happily dick over their legitimate customers while the high seas offers a better edition of their bullshit free of adobe bridge and the numerous spyware, scalping programs and DRM they attach to their products.

Even most colleges and schools pretty much presume most of their students are going to have illegal copies of photoshop just purely because that's such a safer option in the grand scheme of things.

[kyonides]

There's one more thing to consider here. Just check what has occurred to other tech giants like Google and Apple, IIRC. They simply prefer to pay any fine imposed by any federal agency or the amount negotiated by victims during a settlement while still claiming they're not guilty and they're definitely not admitting any responsibility for committing any misdemeanors nor any actual crimes.  Right...

[DerVVulfman]

US sues Adobe for ‘deceiving’ subscriptions

that are too hard to cancel

Story by Emma Roth

The US government is suing Adobe for allegedly hiding expensive fees and making it difficult to cancel a subscription. In the complaint filed on Monday, the Department of Justice claims Adobe “has harmed consumers by enrolling them in its default, most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms.”

The lawsuit alleges Adobe “hides” the terms of its annual, paid monthly plan in the “fine print and behind optional textboxes and hyperlinks,” adding that the company fails to properly disclose the early termination fee incurred upon cancellation “that can amount to hundreds of dollars.”

When customers do attempt to cancel, the DOJ alleges that Adobe requires them to go through an “onerous and complicated” cancellation process. It then allegedly “ambushes” customers with an early termination fee, which may discourage customers from canceling in order to avoid the fee. The DOJ alleges this is a violation of federal laws to protect consumers.

The lawsuit also targets Adobe executives Maninder Sawhney, the senior vice president of digital go-to-market and sales, as well as David Wadhwani, the president of the company’s digital media business.

“Adobe trapped customers into year-long subscriptions through hidden early termination fees and numerous cancellation hurdles,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. “Americans are tired of companies hiding the ball during subscription signup and then putting up roadblocks when they try to cancel.”

In 2012, Adobe went from selling its creative software for lifetime use to charging users for a monthly or yearly subscription to its suite of products, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and others. The company’s subscription model has long frustrated creatives, who are often forced to stay subscribed to Adobe in order to keep doing their jobs. Earlier this month, Adobe’s new terms of service were met with backlash after some interpreted the move as an opportunity to train its AI on users’ art.

The lawsuit speaks to continued regulatory scrutiny of Adobe. In 2022, Adobe attempted to acquire the product design platform Figma for $20 billion, but it abandoned the deal last year after facing antitrust scrutiny from European regulators.

CLICK HERE FOR FILED DOJ COMPAINT
Case 5:24-cv-03630 IN PDF FORMAT

[DerVVulfman]

Yesterday's posted article by Emma Roth from Verge.Com was still being reported. Today, the article had been completed, replete with a link to the DOJ's official complaint... all 26 pages!