When users first learned of Adobe’s modern terms of service (which were quietly updated in February), confusion erupted. Adobe told users it may access their content “through both automated and manual methods” and apply “techniques such as machine learning to improve [Adobe’s] Services and software.” Many understood the update as forcing users to grant unlimited access to their work in order to train Adobe’s generative artificial intelligence: Firefly.
Tardy Tuesday, Adobe issued a clarification: In the an an updated version of the terms of the service contractpledged not to train AI on user content stored locally or in the cloud and gave users the option to opt out of content analytics.
Caught in crossfire of intellectual property lawsuits, the ambiguous language used to update deadlines in advance sheds delicate on an atmosphere 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 storyboard artist at Riot Games, referring to how award-winning artist Brian Kesinger outdoor generated images in the style of his art that are sold under his name on their stock photo site without his consent. Earlier this month, the estate of a deceased photographer Ansel Adams publicly scolded Adobe for allegedly selling generative imitations of its AI work.
Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief strategy officer, tried to allay concerns as artists began to protest explaining this machine learning refers to the company’s non-generative artificial intelligence tools – Photoshop’s “Content Aware Fill” tool, which allows users to seamlessly remove objects from an image, is one of many tools implemented under machine learning. While Adobe insists that the updated terms do not give the company ownership of content and that it will never use user content to train Firefly, the disagreement has sparked a broader discussion about the company’s market monopoly and how such a change could threaten artists’ livelihoods at any point. Lam is among the artists who still believe that, despite Adobe’s explanations, the company will use works created on its Firefly training platform without the creator’s consent.
Nervousness about the wanton apply and monetization of copyrighted works by generative AI models is nothing modern. Early last year, artist Karla Ortiz was able to display images of her work, using her name, in various generative artificial intelligence models; crime that caused a class action lawsuit v. Midjourney, DeviantArt and Stability AI. Ortiz wasn’t alone – Polish fantasy artist Greg Rutkowski discovered it his name was one of the most frequently used prompts in Stable Diffusion when the tool first launched in 2022.
As the owner of Photoshop and creator of PDF files, Adobe has reigned as the industry standard for over 30 years, powering much of the creative class. Attempt to take over a product design company Figma was blocked and abandoned in 2023 due to antitrust concerns confirming its size.
Adobe says Firefly was “ethically trained” for Adobe Stock, but longtime stock image creator Eric Urquhart insists there was “nothing ethical about how Adobe trained the AI for Firefly” , indicating that Adobe does not own the rights to any images from individual authors. Urquhart originally posted his photos to Fotolia, a stock photo site, where he agreed to licensing terms that did not specify any uses of generative artificial intelligence. Then in 2015, Fotolia was acquired by Adobe, which introduced tranquil updates to its terms of service that later allowed the company to train Firefly using Photos of Eric without his express consent: “the language in the current TOS change is very similar to what I saw in the Adobe Stock Terms of Service.”