Adobe responds to terms of use fiasco, insists no unauthorised AI training — user scepticism ensues

Adobe users recently kicked up a fuss on social media about a change to Adobe's terms of use — at the time, seemingly for good reason. Adobe had changed its terms of use to include language that made it seem like its software would give the company the right to view any user content at any given time and potentially even use it to train its Firefly generative AI.

In a recent response, Adobe has clarified its position and changed some of the wording that appeared in the original “Privacy” section of the terms of use. Adobe went further than that, presumably in an attempt to do some damage control, clarifying that it does not use customer work to train Firefly and that it “will never assume ownership” of user content:

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: helpx.adobe.com/firefly/faq.html

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.

In its response, Adobe says that it will only access user data in order for its applications to open and edit files, use some machine learning features — in a practical sense, Adobe's service needs to parse and edit the image in order to make the features work — and to screen content in instances where content is stored online. Adobe's response comes after the original change to the “Privacy” section of the terms of use were heavily criticised (via Reddit) by users. Specific concerns ranged from privacy issues to projects that required NDAs, and the aforementioned AI training consent.

While Adobe insists it isn't acting in malice, and that it has the best interests of its customers at heart, the folks over on r/technology on Reddit seem to think otherwise. Some have pointed out that Adobe previously quietly and automatically enabled AI training on user data during an update, requiring an opt-out if users were uncomfortable with the training.

Comically, Serif Affinity — makers of an Adobe CC competitor software suite — just announced a cheeky 50% flash sale on the entire Affinity 2 suite.

If you're looking to get started in digital art, look into something like a Wacom One or Huion Kamvas 12 Pro drawing tablet from Amazon.