Adobe Responds to AI Backlash

you shouldn't have to opt out they're using the content that you upload to behance to train their AI models it says right [Music] there hey so I want to give you an update on uh the Adobe announcements their clarification their blog post and I want to dig into it and take a look at uh what it means uh well what they're saying uh what it actually means and um you know what relevance it has so first of all why why is this happening why was it Adobe training AI on user content why are they trying to backpedal and say that they weren't when they were and we have proof of it and uh we can see it in the changes they're making and I'm going to show you those changes uh now in this video and would Adobe have even responded if any if someone hadn't brought this up if this issue hadn't uh you know come to surface I don't think they would have I think they would have let everything just go on as they had intended had other people and myself included not dug into the actual terms of service and what that meant what triggered it for me was discovering that uh that checkbox in the preferences in Photoshop you know why why are they doing this and and you know the first thing that we need to do is uh go to the market we can always just go to the market if we take a look at their uh stock price over the last 6 months we will see that it has over 6 months it's down 26% 6 months to lose 26% of the company's value in a six-month period is not good for the CEO for sure it's not good for the company it's not good for the employees but uh they need to do something and they need to do it fast and and uh AI is the thing that they're banking on because that is the primary competitor in the market in the software Market these days and and the reason I bring up the stock markets is because of wisdom of the crowds the markets have uh a really good understanding of of what's going on investors have a really good understanding of what's going on in the market and where companies are headed and uh what they're doing to get there and if that's going to improve or help their business at all a 26% decrease in Share value is significant ific to put it into context I think in 1989 when the space shuttle Challenger exploded the stock price for Morton tho which was the company that made the O-rings plummeted immediately after the event the investigation hadn't even begun the news was still showing Clips but the stock price for the company that was responsible for the tragedy plummeted the stock Brokers and the people trading stocks knew who was responsible like a week before an official investigation had even begun so when I see a stock price that has plummeted so significantly in 6 months you know you know that the company is is doing something the things that it's doing uh are to you know mitigate that fall in share price yeah so Adobe updated its terms of service it tried to do things quietly it it made the change in Photoshop you know trying not to let anyone know but then they got caught red-handed people dug into the terms of service and they really read about what was actually being done and with their work I do think there were some misunderstandings for example and no point in any of the terms of service was Adobe saying that they own your content they never said that they were going to copyright it what people did not understand is that they were giving them a license to use their images in whatever way Adobe C's fit but they were not giving them ownership of the images so in the blog post in the let's let's look at the clarification first there's an update at the top of it because they've uh added another blog post but uh what one one thing that they've said if we go down here to the bottom adobe's continued commitments Adobe does not train Firefly geni models on customer content except they were they were and they do now if you click here on this link that about their machine learning FAQ and we look at this section here how does Adobe analyze your content what most people haven't yet like figured out is that they consider your content public and they will train on that public data when you are a contributor to Adobe stock and behance so if you are someone who contributed to Adobe stock you know you've given them a license to use your work to train their AI model but a lot of people don't understand that if they create projects on bance which for commercial photographers is a very kind of crucial and important platform they're using the content that you upload to behance to train their AI models it says right there it says right here Adobe May analyze your content that is processed or stored on adobe's server we don't analyze contents processed or stored locally on your device that's that's pretty clear then it says when we analyze your content for product Improvement and development purposes we first aggregate your content with other content and then use the aggregated content to train our algorithms and thus improve our products and services that includes Firefly Firefly is a product and service that adobe offers and they're not saying it doesn't include that but it does say if you don't want Adobe to use your content for these purposes you can opt out of content analysis at any time and I've showed you in a previous video that I'll link to at the end exactly how to uh change that in limited circumstances they may manually review your content for product Improvement and development purposes in the following situation if you participate in pre-release beta or Early Access programs so if you're using beta versions of Photoshop then uh you are giving them permission to analyze your content if you use Adobe stock and behance you're giving them permission to analyze your content it says in limited circumstances but it doesn't say what those limited circumstances are then there is a section here right at the bottom that says when does content analysis say opt out not apply this is a section these are circumstances in which you cannot opt out of them using your content Adobe Photoshop Improvement program this program allows you to submit the images you edit in Photoshop to help improve machine learning based features so it says turning off content analysis doesn't affect our ability to analyze your content when you participate in programs where you proactively submit content to develop and improve our products and services so if you are using the product Improvement if you have product Improvement checked in your in your Photoshop preferences then you are not opting out of that if you don't want the content to be used for such purposes you should avoid participating in those programs and they include but are not limited to the Photoshop Improvement program Adobe stock beta and pre-release versions of any products and features which allow you to submit content as feedback but in that case that you're submitting the content so today is June 12th it's been about a week since uh all of this information blew up when I got to my computer this morning Creative Cloud was open on my computer I didn't leave it open but I guess it opened up and you know because it sits in the background but it opened up to let me know there was an update for Photoshop so I recorded the version of Photoshop that I had on my computer this morning and uh we look at the version number and then we go to uh the preferences section uh on Macs that's going to be under Photoshop preferences on Windows it's under edit preferences so you go to the preferences section and you can clearly see that that box is there I updated Photoshop to the 0.1 release version that this updated version that came out this morning and now when I you can see that I go to the version number and then I go to the preferences and now that button has been removed Adobe saying that they don't train on customer content they did they did and they still do they still do in those circumstances that I have already outlined you know through uh bance if you use an adobe portfolio website then Adobe can use your images that are on your website for Content analysis Adobe portfolio website is run through behance you set up the projects in behance you set up your your portfolio sections in behance get a real website get don't use Adobe portfolio you know use something like Squarespace I have videos on here about Squarespace it's great for photographers so yeah Adobe I you know were they lying they did use customer content and they still do use customer content but they've just spelled out how it is now a number of people have been have looked at last week's blog post and they say well this is how they use it this is Adobe has said how they use it and why they use it for and they' they've provided a for example they they've said for example we would use it in these circumstances examples are not limitations an example is one out of many possible uh uses so that doesn't mean that just because they're saying for example child abuse material for example patterns of activity that indicate spam or fishing that doesn't mean those are the only reasons that they are going to look at your content those are one or two reasons why they might look at your content it doesn't eliminate all other reasons now there was a blog post that came out just on Monday I only saw it yesterday so I don't know what time it came out on Monday so we have a blog post uh released on Monday from Scott bsky and Dana Rail and it says we recently rolled out a re acceptance of our terms of use which has led to concerns about what these terms are and what they mean to our customers this has caused us to reflect on the language we use in our terms and the opportunity we have to be clear and address the concerns raised by the community over the next few days we'll speak to our customers with a plan to rule out updated changes by June 18th so that is next uh Tuesday and I I will provide you with an update at that time as well so it says here at Adobe there's no ambiguity in our stance our commitment to our customers and innovating responsibly in the space we've never trained generative AI on customer content Tak an ownership of a customer's work or allowed access to customer content Beyond legal requirements so I I really don't just I just can't see how they've never trained generative AI on customer content when there are clearly options within Photoshop to allow them to do so says nor were we considering any of these practices as part of recent terms of use update that said we agree that evolving our terms of use to reflect our commitments to our community is the right thing to do you own your own content um yes of course that wasn't an issue we don't trange generative AI on customer content except when we do uh we're adding this statement to our terms of use to reassure people that is a legal obligation on Adobe Adobe fireflies only trained on a data set of so here's here's the the part that I'm skeptical about it says Adobe Firefly is only trained on a data set of licensed content with permission such as not limited to but such as Adobe stock and public domain content where copyright has expired here's the issue by checking that box in Photoshop you are opting in and Licensing your content to Adobe or to be more accurate where you have not opted out this this this should be opt in only you shouldn't have to opt out of it the fact that I had to opt out of both things that's the annoyance for me says you have a choice not to participate in our product Improvement program yes you do says we may use usage data and content characteristics to improve your product experience and develop features like masking and background removal among others through techniques including machine learning not generative AI you always have the option of opting out of our desktop product Improvement programs so what the saying is that they will use your content to train their AI they just won't use it in generative Ai and I just don't believe them I like I don't believe them like everything's everything is Firefly how do I know that like you're using Firefly for generative fill you know are you're using machine learning for for content to wear and and removing people and characteristics from Photoshop from images but it's not generative AI there like what is the separation we need to know the separation cuz right now I just I don't I don't trust you and I'm just not going to participate in those programs the licenses we require to operate and improve our products on your behalf should be narrowly tailored to the activities needed yes 100% yes the licenses required to operate our products on your behalf use the standard statutory copyright rights but will now include plain English examples of what they mean and why they are required we will also separate out and further limit the licenses required to improve our products and emphasize the opt out option we will reiterate that in no case did these license grants transfer ownership of your content to Adobe again they're saying emphasize the opt out option it shouldn't be an option to opt out it should be an option to opt in you shouldn't have to opt out they're they're putting you in a position they're putting us in a position where it's it's upon us to say no instead of upon them to ask us yes yes we shouldn't have to opt out it shouldn't be our responsibility it's their responsibility Adobe does not scan content stored locally on your computer in any way yeah I didn't think they did it's it's the stuff going into the cloud that is uh an issue it's the fact that there was a setting in Photoshop that allowed them to use your work to train their AIS but it wasn't clear what that is I'm I'm looking forward to the updated terms of service would they be updating their terms of service if there hadn't been this Holo probably not probably not that's that's what corporations do yeah I don't I don't know I don't know what to think right now I I have very little trust in Adobe uh but I am doing everything that I need to to ensure that they are not using my work to train their AI I'll keep you posted in the meantime subscribe to this channel so that and turn on the notifications so you'll get the update when I release uh the next video