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AI

Adobe Says It Won't Train AI On Customers' Work In Overhauled ToS (theverge.com) 35

Posted by BeauHD from the dos-and-dont's dept.
In a new blog post, Adobe said it has updated its terms of service to clarify that it won't train AI on customers' work. The move comes after a week of backlash from users who feared that an update to Adobe's ToS would permit such actions. The clause was included in ToS sent to Creative Cloud Suite users, which claimed that Adobe "may access, view, or listen to your Content through both automated and manual methods -- using techniques such as machine learning in order to improve our Services and Software and the user experience." The Verge reports: The new terms of service are expected to roll out on June 18th and aim to better clarify what Adobe is permitted to do with its customers' work, according to Adobe's president of digital media, David Wadhwani. "We have never trained generative AI on our customer's content, we have never taken ownership of a customer's work, and we have never allowed access to customer content beyond what's legally required," Wadhwani said to The Verge. [...]

Adobe's chief product officer, Scott Belsky, acknowledged that the wording was "unclear" and that "trust and transparency couldn't be more crucial these days." Wadhwani says that the language used within Adobe's TOS was never intended to permit AI training on customers' work. "In retrospect, we should have modernized and clarified the terms of service sooner," Wadhwani says. "And we should have more proactively narrowed the terms to match what we actually do, and better explained what our legal requirements are."

"We feel very, very good about the process," Wadhwani said in regards to content moderation surrounding Adobe stock and Firefly training data but acknowledged it's "never going to be perfect." Wadhwani says that Adobe can remove content that violates its policies from Firefly's training data and that customers can opt out of automated systems designed to improve the company's service. Adobe said in its blog post that it recognizes "trust must be earned" and is taking on feedback to discuss the new changes. Greater transparency is a welcome change, but it's likely going to take some time to convince scorned creatives that it doesn't hold any ill intent. "We are determined to be a trusted partner for creators in the era ahead. We will work tirelessly to make it so."
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Adobe Says It Won't Train AI On Customers' Work In Overhauled ToS More

Adobe Says It Won't Train AI On Customers' Work In Overhauled ToS

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  • they've been doing this for years (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The old TOS had the same language. The AI product that Adobe has now (and which touted that it was trained without questions of copyright infringement) was trained on user data.
    • Surely, if this is true :

      The old TOS had the same language.

      then this

      that it was trained without questions of copyright infringement

      is also true.

      Providing that the "old TOS" was in effect at the time that the data was scraped/ stolen. Or is the relevant time when it was used, in which case, Adobe potentially have a problem.

      Which is the relevant date - when the data was taken/ stolen, versus when it was used? Expensive legal brains can probably tell you, for a substantial fee.

      • Surely, if this is true :

        The old TOS had the same language.

        then this

        that it was trained without questions of copyright infringement

        is also true.

        Providing that the "old TOS" was in effect at the time that the data was scraped/ stolen. Or is the relevant time when it was used, in which case, Adobe potentially have a problem.

        Which is the relevant date - when the data was taken/ stolen, versus when it was used? Expensive legal brains can probably tell you, for a substantial fee.

        The kicker here for me is these TOS documents shouldn't change the basics of law and right and wrong. If I build custom art arrangements in my garage, my wrenches are not sending every creation to the corporation that made the wrench so that they can then build bigger, better, faster versions of the same thing. Why should users have to accept that their tools are now being used to create technology driven replacements for them by watching them create? I get that scum-sucking, bottom-feeding, low-life lawyer

        • these TOS documents shouldn't change the basics of law and right and wrong.

          [Rolling_on_the_floor_,_helpless_with_mirth.GIF]

          What purpose, other than overriding and changing "agreed principles", would a "Terms of Service" "agreement have? If the alleged "agreed principles" suited the corporate purposes, there would be no need to spend money on lawyers to create something new?

          Clearly, we've given up on that idea here in the states. Maybe some other countries can do better?

          America ever had such principles? I'

  • until they do!
  • I could never understand why anyone would use Adobe's cloud storage services for their IP. Something like this was bound to happen, and will probably still happen even though they say they're backtracking. Same thing with Autodesk. The only secure cloud is a private cloud.

    • The only secure cloud is a private cloud.

      [Distant sound of NSA etc chuckling.]

      • Can NSA see through full disk encryption?
        • Did you get your FDE in a country where the NSA have control? Well, now you know where to get your private key backups from.
          • So, I'm hearing : Yes.
            NSA can see thru full disk encryption?
            any particular algorithms you recommend?

            Strategic thinkers read things, connect ideas, have suspicions... a lot is not in the open, known, or known and merely ignored, I can see that.
            Any particular evidence or references regarding how Agencies can decrypt stuff?
            I'm willing to accept rumours or conjecture for the sake of argument.
            • They manipulated the parameters for tuning algorithms to exclude families of algorithms that they couldn't break, trivially.

              Sub-text : they keep a close eye on competent number theorists. The ones they can suborn, "succeed" ; the ones who don't sign the NDA tend to have accidents. Burst condoms, debilitating diseases, that sort of thing. Oddly, their careers stall.

              • do you have any practical advice for choosing encryption algorithms?
                What I think it quite clear at this point is that it is you service providers, your apple/google/ms/amzn/verizon/Att who are a threat to data security.... like network keys as you point out. I presume it would be trivial for Digital Ocean to take a disk image and peruse it or hand it over to "authorized" agencies. So Ive been rebuilding my network with FDE everywhere to mitigate against that.... using dm-crypt. Got any ideas on that?
                What ar
                • Why, "citizen" are you attempting to evade the Thought Police and their legitimate enquiries?

                  Nope, you're fucked. Have been for years. If you're lucky, they'll break your encryption ; if you're unlucky, they#ll break bits of you until you give them the keys. Randall Munroe was joking - "ha ha but serious" - with his XKCD involving the encrypted disc and the 5$ wrench. But that "ha ha" has a "but serious" with it.

                  You could make it more difficult. Don't travel abroad (where you're vulnerable to external ren

                  • sheesh, you're grumpier than me.. he he..

                    So that may be practical advice for traveling but I was more looking for pointers about full disk encryption and algorithms mainly.
                    I'm sure they could beat the keys out of me, that's not in question.
                    • Oh, well if it's practical advice - forget encryption (if it's available, it is already broken) and only use volatile storage. Which for normal storage materials means temperatures of 1500 Centigrade (1800 K) and upwards. Thermite is probably your best bet (with appropriate triggering electronics, and in sufficient mass to ensure volatility of data even under fire-hose treatment). This would probably mean any travelling is done by ships, trains and automobiles.

                      You do air-gap your data from internet access.

  • Just Stop (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @06:25PM (#64544923) Homepage

    None of Adobe's software is the best in its class and that has been true for many years now. Just stop buying it. It's garbage. If you are getting it for free somehow, cool, keep on using it. If you are pirating it, also cool, keep on using it. But stop giving Adobe money for their shitty products. Photoshop sucks. Premiere Pro sucks. Lightroom sucks. Acrobat is literally the worst for PDFs, which is crazy since it's Adobe's file format. Like outside of getting any of this for free, what are peoples defenses? "Oh, I'm just used to it" - not a defense. "There isn't anything better" - there literally is. "All my old stuff will be useless" - not a defense and your own fault.

    • adobe [ uh-doh-bee ] noun

              sun-dried brick made of clay and straw, in common use in countries having little rainfall.

      Half-baked products? Be glad you're not getting dried mud.

    • "All my old stuff will be useless" - not a defense and your own fault.

      Surely competitor products are deploying automatic convertors - when asked to open a Adobe-format file, they automatically produce a new file in the product's default file format, then later save the edited product in the user's format of choice (side-serving of updating the default to match the user's choice available in the configuration).

      You'd probably want to keep the original around, in the event that Adobe have hidden something in

    • I have no idea. All the dummies I talk to in graphics literally take insult if you say a single word about Adobe that isn't just grovelling praise. Honest question: what is best in class? What is Adobe's competition?

      • I have no idea. All the dummies I talk to in graphics literally take insult if you say a single word about Adobe that isn't just grovelling praise. Honest question: what is best in class? What is Adobe's competition?

        Graphic arts programs that use digital tools are pretty much indoctrination centers for Adobe and Apple. They go near religious with it. Some folks fresh out of school that made the mistake of mentioning the alternatives to professors are so battered and bruised from the experience that they'll just regurgitate the spew that was spouted at them as they were being verbally whipped for their sacrilege. They remember the pain of mentioning GIMP, and the adulation heaped upon the mighty Photoshop. And that's go

    • I have to agree. Every time I’ve tried to use Acrobat to edit a document, I wanted to throw my PC through a window. How they manage to make a word processor so sh^&*y after all this time is beyond me.

      • PDFs are not a friendly file format for editing. They are intended to be exact replicas of printed output and so they prioritise getting all the pixels, curves and text fragments exactly as they were in the source editor. This means that just because you are looking at a white page with Arial 9pt text in a small box doesn't mean the internal document structure is anything even remotely similar to that. It could be something as simple as the author got a stroked line too close to the text and the only way to

    • Assuming I agree that Photoshop and Acrobat suck (I do to a degree), serious question: What are the best alternatives for Photoshop, Adobe's RAW plugin, and Acrobat?

      I have tried GIMP and couldn't get into it, the interface was too clunky and the filters weren't as good.
      What Adobe alternative allows for realtively easy editing and re-ordering of PDF pages (something the Adobe is actually fairly good at)?

    • "All my old stuff will be useless" - not a defense and your own fault.

      That's a bit unfair. It doesn't matter if you've been using Photoshop, GIMP or Affinity Photo or whatever for your entire career, you'll have drives filled to the brim with the format that fully represents the entire metadata of your work and none of them will be 100% compatible with anything else. Just because GIMP is open source doesn't mean Affinity Photo will 100% cover your .xcf files. How much of the data loss of importing a .psd into GIMP is feature incompatibility vs. proprietary binary blobs that n

  • ThatÂs not what Adobe says (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @06:33PM (#64544943)

    The machine learning thing is still on in the TOS.

  • If I've learned anything about dealing with Adobe is DON'T TRUST THEM. That being said, I fully off all Adobe products now.

  • Weasel words! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @06:38PM (#64544951)

    Watch what Louis Rossmann has to say about Adobe's retraction. It's not a retraction at all and simply uses weasel-words to try and cover the truth. They ARE going to use your content for their AI.

    Louis rips Adobe to shreds over their garbage response, because they deserve it [youtube.com]

  • Too late... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by njen ( 859685 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @06:48PM (#64544963)
    I work in VFX, and a sizeable chunk of my contacts all cancelled their Adobe subscriptions this week, and are likely to not go back. I had moved off Adobe about 2 years ago and never looked back. I hate shilling for any company because I feel like I aught to be paid to do it, but talking purely fact based, I went to Affinity because for the price of 2 months of Adobe subscription, I was able to buy perpetual licenses of all three Affinity products.

  • Adobe will soon be a zombie (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @06:58PM (#64544981)

    I stopped training my wallet on Adobe products a long time ago. There are finally reasons for many others to do the same.

    • I had this row over being required to produce PDFs with Compu$erve, back in about 1998 - long before I stopped hearing the warble of the modem. A little later, I discovered "print-to-PDF" pseudo printer drivers, and about the same time started using Portable Apps versions of various free software to keep a uniform computing environment between home and work (at the expense of lugging around a Zip drive, or later, portable HDDs). And I'd already stopped subscribing to Compu$erve, though not over the "PDF pre

  • Adobe won't train on...

    Microsoft won't train on...

    Pattern anyone?

  • Sounds like they are going to anyway, and say that they're not doing what they're doing.

  • Not long ago...... (Score:3)

    by doubledown00 ( 2767069 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @12:12AM (#64545445)

    ....folks called me an anti-technology troglodyte (and other things) for my refusal to use the cloud. I opposed it because it wasn't necessarily cheaper in the long run and I didn't want to hand my data over to third parties who I couldn't control what they did to it.

    It brings me no joy to say "I told everyone, fuck all y'all".

    Companies will continue to steal cloud stored data as more of them get into the AI game and start training their systems. I'm wondering how long it will take Dropbox to leverage what they have and start licensing user files to others.

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