Generative Artificial Intelligence has caused an earthquake in the artistic world, from which not all creators will emerge well. The possibility of replacing an artist with an AI that does the same job was not well received by the community; Companies like Adobe also haven’t released applications with AI and new generative features in programs like Photoshop.
Artists and content creators took up arms against Adobe today, after posts on social network ‘spy on users and copy their work.
Specifically, the new terms allow Adobe “access, view or listen to content by manual and automated methods”, for tasks such as “content review”. This alone would be problematic, since Adobe gives itself the right to see everything we do with Photoshop and the rest of its programs; In addition to the privacy issue this entails, many users wonder if this could violate their NDAs (confidentiality agreements) because Adobe would see secret work (such as logos and illustrations) done for other companies.
Further in the text, there is the most controversial part: use of machine learning to review content confirmed created by users “to improve our services and software”. Immediately, accusations surfaced that Adobe trains its AI model using users’ creations from Photoshop and other company programs, such as Lightroom, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and After Effects.
Users are required to accept these terms of service, a long document with legal terminology, if they wish to continue using the programs for which they pay with a subscription. Not accepting the terms means abandoning programs you have been using for years, including work done so far. Faced with this, a campaign was organized on social networks to convince users to turn to alternatives such as Clip Studio Paint, Gimp, Krita, Inkscape, Blender or Affinity.
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But are these accusations true? Even Adobe’s biggest defenders believe the company did something wrong, but not to the point of stealing content from its users; Instead, they consider the new terms of service to be poorly written and give rise to a misunderstanding. For starters, these terms aren’t exactly “new”, but were released in February 2024; Only now many users have started seeing the pop-up that requires them to agree to continue using the programs.
The initial defense focused on confirming that they are not spying on what users are doing on their own computers; Instead, the company claims that content review only refers to what is stored in the Adobe cloud. Therefore, if we decided not to make a copy of the file in the cloud, Adobe should not have been able to see our project; although it is important to review it, because by default Adobe will use the 100 GB associated with our account to store our creations. Adobe employee Scott Belsky explained that these terms are “probably” necessary for functions such as the ability to search documents or update components.
Typically, terms of service are one of those things that don’t matter to most users; but in this case, with the drama of Generative Artificial Intelligence, many users analyze them closely.
