Adobe Responds to Criticism of Its New Terms of Service
Yesterday I wrote about the controversy surrounding Adobe and its updated terms of service. Creators were furious after receiving a pop-up requiring them to agree to the new terms: otherwise they could not access Photoshop and could not remove the application from their computers.
However, it was not just the fact that the terms were mandatory that alarmed many users. The new language seemed to suggest that Adobe was claiming the right to access creators’ work for a variety of reasons: This was confusing to many, since many professionals have non-disclosure agreements for their work with Adobe applications. Of course, despite the legal situations, many also rejected the idea that Adobe could access the works created by these authors simply because Adobe originally created the applications they used.
Adobe remained silent on this issue until the publication of this blog post . In it, the company explains that the changes to the “Terms of Use” were actually small changes and were intended to clarify the company’s moderation policies. The company posted a snippet of the terms on its blog, with the new additions highlighted in pink (including any clauses that were removed from the previous terms):
What’s new here, Adobe says, is that the company says it “can” (not “just will”) access your content through automated and manual methods, and that it screens content for illegal content, including sexual content. violence against children. If the automated system believes something is illegal, it flags the item for human review. The rest of the terms appear to be the same as always, and the pop-up that appeared was the usual re-acceptance campaign urging users to agree to minor changes.
Since this “access” was the crux of the argument, Adobe went into more detail in its blog post about why it needed it. The company says it needs access to user content for three specific reasons: to run standard functions in apps (such as opening files or creating thumbnails); for cloud-based features such as Photoshop’s neural filters and background removal; and, as stated in the terms above, to screen for illegal activity or other offensive content.
Additionally, the company says it doesn’t train Firefly Gen AI models on your content, and Adobe will never “assume responsibility” for your work. If you’re wondering why the company is specifically talking about Firefly Gen AI models rather than a more general statement about AI training in general, it’s because the company actually uses content you store in the cloud , including images, audio, video, text etc. or documents to train your AI. Any data you upload to Adobe’s servers is fair game to this process and is combined with everyone else’s data to teach Adobe’s AI to “improve [Adobe’s] products and services.”
This is not explicitly stated in the blog post, but Adobe’s support article states that you can opt out of this training by going to your account privacy settings and then deactivating the ” Allow Adobe to analyze my content to improve the product” switch. and development goals within the framework of Content Analysis .
What’s the result?
Adobe probably won’t constantly scrutinize your work for insider secrets about your projects, and categorically states that it won’t claim ownership of your projects. However, the company can gain access to anything you upload to Adobe’s servers: this access allows Adobe to scan for illegal content and also allows the company to collect your work to train its artificial intelligence models.
While it’s smart to skip AI training, the best way to continue using Adobe applications without worrying about Adobe access is to store all projects locally on your computer. If you don’t use Adobe’s cloud services, the company will only be able to access your work for app-related tasks like creating thumbnails, according to the terms.
These rules were also largely in effect for an undisclosed period of time: the pop-up you may have seen this week was intended to be your consent to minor changes Adobe made to the terms, rather than sweeping changes. You already agreed to this policy – you just didn’t know it. My recommendation? Limit your cloud work with Adobe in the future unless you absolutely need it for your job. The more of your content you can store on your computer, the better.