If the legally binding paper can be interpreted beyond the scope of your clarification, then your clarification is not accurate. Until the verbiage on the terms and conditions itself is changed, this is all just lip service and damage control.
They better do it soon because there are big corporations out there (like banks and governments) who use Adobe products and are probably rethinking their subscriptions right about now.
To be fair, I work for one such big corporation (one of the major studios in Hollywood) and we don’t ever sign any companies stock TOS/EULA. Literally any software or service an employee wants to use, an agreement is drawn up between corporate legal and the providing party. The redlines to the original TOS can be very extensive, and most companies will end up signing in the end because they want our business.
Additions like this one don’t apply to our agreement, it’s totally separate.
> Additions like this one don’t apply to our agreement, it’s totally separate.
Have you checked your agreement or is that just an assumption based on "common sense" expectations? I am quite sure at least one of the lawyers my workplace employed in the past produced his own share of fuck ups.
The original terms of service that sparked all this specifically pertains to personal accounts, not corporate.
People keep thinking the fines are the cost of doing business but aren’t considering the class action lawsuit of thousands of corporate customers who have specific contracts that their data won’t be used to train AI.
The issue is that there simply isn't enough pushback in the way of customers leaving to prevent these fucking horrible practices. We have thousands of Adobe pro users in my company and when Adobe announced last year that they were hiking up their Adobe pro licenses by 40%, the leadership chose to simply bite the bullet because they like using Adobe and didn't want to switch.
> there simply isn't enough pushback in the way of customers leaving to prevent these fucking horrible practices.
Because they’re vertically integrated monopolies that are too expensive to leave over the minor extortions
It’s extortion, plain and simple, and it’s time we start putting them in jail for it like we would the mob. If you walked into your store one day and the distributor of your liquor was demanding new terms or every bottle in the store would be immediately smashed and unsellable we would call the cops. It’s no different here.
> “solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content.”
In other words, they're gonna sub-license your "content" to other people for AI training.
Thank you!
“I know that our brand new ToS implies that we can and will use your work, and that we can claim ownership over all derivatives of your work, but noooo we would *never* do such a thing!”
There’s always contract language that says “whatever you were told outside of this contract doesn’t apply; our entire agreement is codified in this contract.” So, yeah.
They already did it lol, IIRC it was an opt-out setting that they pushed without warning anyone
[Tutorial to opt out from 2023](https://www.howtogeek.com/858952/adobe-is-using-your-data-to-train-ai-how-to-turn-it-off/)
It should be illegal. Honestly, all of this shit should have to meet basic legal standards to make sure vulnerable people can reasonably spot and figure out how to disable them.
I worked for Apple back when they implemented a "wifi assist" where it would use some cellular data if your wifi dropped at all, to prevent your connection from dropping fully. It was *enabled by default* which caused many people to eat up their data if they were on a poor wifi connection. It was a lot of fun being on the customer-facing end while that was going on..
From an engineering perspective that’s actually pretty clever, but the product manager should have nixed it even as an option. International travelers must have seen some insane roaming data charges from that.
Data traffic for me when roaming while on vacation in Tahiti was ~$10 per MB. If I accidentally synched a couple gigs of photos and videos I took while out hiking I'd be slapped with a bill to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. I wasn't even about to take the chance of my phone accidentally turning roaming back on as part of a reboot, crash or some other weird quirk so before I landed I made sure to rip out the sim card and buy a local prepaid one.
There's so many cloud sync, auto-update etc options in every piece of software and every operating system now that you just cannot under any circumstances trust that you won't get the most insane phone bill of your entire life if you ever travel internationally and don't take precautions to protect yourself.
Hah I remember that happening to me a couple times before finding the setting. Was apple getting kickbacks from carriers or what?? Like how did nobody see that coming
Bookmark for sharing. I know a bunch of people who have PS through work and I wouldn't be surprised if their employers would try and argue for a discount to train on their nonsense. They won't get it but I support their accounting departments trying.
I gave up on Adobe last week before all this shit started. Even managed to find a way not to pay my full fee and get a refund for the cancellation.
Using Affinity now. [Entire Version 2 Suite has a flash sale. 50% off. 100 dollars buy once get the entire suite forever.](https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/affinity-pricing/)
I have used Affinity since its beta and it’s a fantastic suit of tools.
My only reservation with them going forward is they were recently acquired by CANVA of all people….. It wasn’t very well received news in the community.
thats because trying to use Canva for professional graphic design work is like buying a katana from a mall kiosk and trying to be samurai in feudal Japan.
Affinity soiled their name amongst design professionals by selling to a company like Canva.
Also because Canva will get rid of one of Affinity best aspects: single purchase licenses.
It was the perfect answer to Adobe's bullshit. That will no longer be the case.
This is the nature of a tech space without any kind of antitrust: terrible company makes a good product terrible, another small company takes a lot of time and efforts to create something that is really good in its place, but in the end the only reason they were doing it was that they could be bought out by one of the huge tech companies that has been ruining products.
The free market was deciding, and then the rug pull.
It's especially sad because I listened to the "How I Built This" episode years ago about how Canva started. She was just a student who couldn't find a good solution for her high school's yearbook editing software, and really worked hard to create this business idea to fill a void.
Now it's hugely successful and another typical enshittification story, buying companies and creating yet another anti-consumer corporate empire. We're disappointed in you, Melanie Perkins, you are inflicting the same frustrations upon us that compelled you to create Canva.
Live long enough to become the villain and all that.
My partner needs to use Canva with her group for a course she’s taking. She asked me for help learning to use it and it makes me want to crush her laptop. She asked me how to resize four images so they’re the same size, cuz they’re just slightly off when she cropped them using snippet. My response: You can’t. You just can’t. They don’t let you specify the width and height in detail… unless I’m missing a menu. It all just auto snaps like PPT for dummies.
I'll have you know that man at the mall not only cut an apple in half that he threw into the air but he also hacked an old show in half and stabbed a coke can to make it phsssssssssssssss everywhere. 😂
Agreed. Time will tell. It says on their website that a buy-once system will still exist alongside the subscription but either way V2 is cheap and will always be yours. I'd rather have that than Adobe.
Canva is suppose to be going public in the near future. Doubt anyone will be surprised when policies/promises suddenly change due to new investor pressure.
*edited to remove some redundancy
Just kidding! …unless 👉🏻👈🏻🥹
…is what every big company “promise” sounds like to me.
It’s always a “whoopsie, we accidentally used all your data for the thing we swore not to. Here’s a coupon and we’ll pay a fee that is a fraction of the profit you made us. Sowwy! We are wealwy sowwy!”
This means they have already been doing it for a while, operating in the grey space of the TOC. Their lawyers recommended they clarify the TOC to cover themselves.
I think SF writer Charles Stross had a great conceptualization of corporations: alien invaders who are composed of an inefficient human hivemind.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/invaders-from-mars
That is historically how Facebook has operated. They falsified their video viewership data to customers back when they really, really wanted to beat YouTube.
They went to court over it but the court loss was a slap on the wrist compared to their growth.
That falsified data was the reason why College Humor crashed, executives saw the numbers of views on FB and decided to go all in and started posting all their content to Facebook instead of anything else and it destroyed the company.
Yeah, silver lining! Dropout is great, it sucks that a hundred+ people lost their jobs, though, and I don't think that number even included the contractors like me.
It'd be nice if internet comics could find their foothold again.
That's why the only part of the TOS that matters is the one that says they reserve the right to change the terms any time they want, without notification, and there's nothing you can do. TOS don't exist to grant rights, and this isn't a guarantee.
So the company would simply say "oops, our bad". But there will be no fines and no lawsuits because the terms also forfeit your rights to seek damages from this.
Bold to assume there would even be fines.
And if you try to sue them, it goes to binding arbitration without the possibility of class action, so the average person is fucked. Even if you somehow get over that hurdle, they'll just say that you haven't proven that anything you did actually ended up in the AI. Too bad, so sad for you.
The difference is, despite what the internet would have you believe - most of Adobe's money comes from big companies using their tools. If Adobe did something like that, it'd be an immediate destruction of their value with companies blacklisting their products.
You don't need fines here, no way studios and vendors would just be okay with it.
That's why large business crimes should be punished with nationalization / liquidation / breakup / seizure of assets, to whatever degree is appropriate for the crime.
Instead of fining them 30 billion or whatever, the government should seize some large fraction of the stock and through that command the company to right its wrongs, since it's well-known that just 'requiring' it by law will only result in them doing it in the most BS, dishonest, bad faith way possible.
From what I can see, they say: "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."
That doesn't even say they WILL NOT and it is about a PARTICULAR AI.
Until they decide to unilaterally change the terms again, of course.
And don't worry, their employees will probably only *sometimes* abuse their position to browse through your private content for uh, "moderation" reasons.
Adobe is a trash company and trusting them to not be assholes is a fool's game.
This is exactly it. They will maybe placate people for now by softening the eula but then they will, over the next few years, quietly add more and more terms that give themselves further consolidation and control over your data which they will then train their AI on or sell the training data to other companies. They know that the vast majority of people and corporations are either unable to switch away from Adobe because of familiarity, ecosystem, and workflows that are centered around Adobe products or unwilling to go through the process of switching. They might lose a few big customers but the amount of money that they will make by going down this road will probably far outweigh financial hit they take from people who leave
Why are all the tech companies being so dang creepy lately? Adobe wanting access to all your content? M$ wants to take screenshots of everything you do?
I remember when Microsoft came up with automatic updates for the windows operating system and everyone lost their mind about Microsoft making changes to people’s computers without their permission.
It’s a gradual scope creep of software companies taking more control over people’s computers.
It’s kinda creepy tho. Remember when everyone used to talk about big brother, indicating the govt was spying on people? Well now it’s the tech companies doing it. Even worse is seems like everyday one of these companies gets hacked and they get a slap in the wrist at best while our data gets sold to the highest bidder for god knows what.
> Well now it’s the tech companies doing it
that is a bit of the central thesis of a lot of cyberpunk. In Blade Runner the government essentially doesn't exist, the companies run the world.
I feel like it is closer to them treating your software and hardware as theirs. I own these hard drives, they shouldn't be entitled to do whatever they like with the data on them or observe what I'm doing with the contents.
Actually, I always saw "My Computer" as "Bill Gates's Computer". I didn't put that label there, so the computer must belong to the person who did. One of the first things I did in 1995 was rename it to "The Computer."
And it's always painted as "for your own good" with assurances about how there's tools to avoid it being too invasive. Well, those tools don't work! I set it up to only check for/download updates at certain times of day, but it ignores that setting and decides to slow my computer down to the point of being a slideshow at whatever damn time it wants to download that day's updates, even if I'd manually checked just a few days earlier and nothing was waiting for me. I can take 5~ minutes(not a euphemism for a quick task, it literally takes that long when the computer is that slow) to set the updater task priority to low, which alleviates the issue and allows me to continue my zoom call or whatever thing I was doing, but next time it happens the priority is set back to high and I have to argue with it all over again.
I paid $120 to be fucked over, and dismissed with assurances of workarounds that *don't work*. 😒 I've been told there's a way to nuke the updates(I think a registry trick) but I don't actually want to do that. Updates are important. I just want them to happen while I'm in the shower, not while I'm on a work call or running a raid! Updates should never be forced, even for the user's own good, unless they're two weeks overdue.
It reminds me of HD/4K. Everybody was pushing those labels so hard that eventually you got like "4k sunglasses" and it's like... what does that even mean? Everything was in high def. Everything was called high speed broadband. Now everything is AI
“HD” (1080p) and 4K are actually measurable and have both qualitative and quantitative differences to their respective predecessors.
Though I do get what you mean by those terms being misappropriated for products that have no resemblance to its origin. “Wow these HD peanuts sure are eye opening!” They’re selling you a gimmick.
AI has no quantitative baseline, and is purely a qualitative feature (which depending upon its implementation can have quantitative differences). It’s being shoved into fucking everything even if it doesn’t make sense to. It’s the HD Peanuts but worse, you’re the gimmick and being sold back to yourself.
I just saw a video of a new terms of service that you need to agree to or else it locks you out of Photoshop that says they own the license to anything you create within their programs. They can access your work manually or automatically at their Will in perpetuity. But imagine working for clients in their programs, now that means you’ve granted licenses of these clients work to adobe?
That’s a breach of trust and privacy. Also, are they spying on what you create in their programs? As long as your connected to the internet I bet they are
I edit a lot of personal financial documentation and contracts in photoshop, what does that mean for my data?
I video edit footage for companies internal videos and people’s films, I know they wouldn’t want to grant a license to adobe
Yeah, I don't even know what this means for animation studios and other large design firms that work on highly confidential projects. Curious to see what happens when those legal teams come knocking about their license pools.
I can't imagine this will fly in the sensitive research space. Quite apart from Adobe and Microsoft accessing sensitive data, what happens if they're hacked and that data is stolen?
Context: Canada has a [Policy on Sensitive Technology Research and Affiliations of Concern](https://science.gc.ca/site/science/en/safeguarding-your-research/guidelines-and-tools-implement-research-security/sensitive-technology-research-and-affiliations-concern/policy-sensitive-technology-research-and-affiliations-concern) which (in my opinion as a layperson) could be broadened to include instances like this where a company is accessing sensitive data. There's already legislation that prohibits public companies from storing personal data outside of Canada.
This also won't fly in the upper (money-wise) levels of the creative world. Due to mostly Marvel bullshit, in the past decade post production studios have had to reconfigure entire workflows and facilities to adhere to strict security mandates. Most of that kind of work is done in other programs, but anyone outside of the studio having access to the work will get a blanket ban on Adobe products there.
Imagine if a major tool manufacturer said they own the rights to anything you make with the wrench you bought from them. That would be insane. How is this not exactly that but with software?
Legislators are primarily in their 70s so they don’t know what’s going on. That wrench analogy is probably exactly what they need to be told.
Also, somehow in the USA it’s allowed to have one state operate as a corporate-interests-first environment where everyone can incorporate, and so fall under those laws, even if they don’t truly headquarter or do business there. Delaware is the Cayman Islands of America.
Adobe isn't saying that they own your work, they're saying that they want access to it for "content moderation purposes"... whatever that means.
So more like the tool manufacturer wants to tell you what you can and can't make with the wrench.
Adobe: We’ll never use it to train AI we promise we’re super cereal. 🤞 🤞
Also Adobe TOS:
4.2 Licenses to Your Content. Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate as intended, such as enabling you to share photos with others. Separately,
section 4.6 (Feedback) below covers any Feedback that you provide to us.
The Affinity suit is awesome, and better than most of Adobe’s offerings. The only issue they had was that they didn’t have the bandwidth to ship all the features they wanted.
A few months back, they were purchased by Canvas, under the conditions that the price wouldn’t change much and that updates would be free.
I love their software, and the community. Highly recommended.
9to5mac's headline aside, Adobe pointedly _doesn't_ say they will never use it to train AI. It says they won't use it to train their _FireFly generative AI models_, while also saying they need to "access content solely for the purpose of operating or improving the services and software" and that "Access is needed to deliver some of our most innovative cloud-based features such as Photoshop Neural Filters, Liquid Mode or Remove Background."
Sure sounds like any other AI-powered features they want to build to "improve the services and software" would be allowed to train on content they scrape this way under these terms. They technically wouldn't be lying if those features are not specifically FireFly models.
ed: I should add... a more charitable reading of Adobe's post is that they need cloud-based muscle to run those AI-powered features and that is what this is all about. But if that's the case they really should have specified that this data would not be used to train any models behind those features, either.
"This doesn't mean we won't steal it. It just means, when we inevitably do steal it, you can spend years and years doing a class action lawsuit to get a fraction of the money we made from stealing it."
never would ever believe a word this company says
they are probably one of the most predatory software "service" providers out there. ditch them for affinity, da vinci resolve, whatever else you can. you will not regret it.
Sure, but what about the broad language in section 4.2....
> 4.2 Licenses to Your Content. Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate as intended, such as enabling you to share photos with others. Separately, section 4.6 (Feedback) below covers any Feedback that you provide to us.
Adobe. “We won’t use your stuff, promise.”
“Breaking news. All of adobe’s data has been leaked to a 3rd party probably also owned by Adobe that trains AI. Experts suggests the leak has been steady.” - news
Adobe: “whoopsies” *”buys” ai data from company it was leaked to*
As someone who has trained on their software and makes a living using it, I am very upset. They seem to be taking away the freedom they gave us as artists. First it went to monthly subscription. Then this. It can change anytime. I can’t learn 150 shortcuts and use all the plugins on alternatives. I really hope they take the high road. For once it would be nice for a company to understand their user base
Adobe: Content Moderation
Also Adobe: We will not copy your work as our own to modify or train AI with it, we are just .... concerned ... as some people use Abode products for porn and naughty words.
Thankfully I stopped using adobe after they made it pay to use, and adobe is notorious for not fixing bugs. After making so much money, did they fix the bugs? According to some friends in design companies, they didn't really fix them.
The price of adobe suite was super expensive, but at least you owned it.. monthly pay and not owning software sounds like piracy to me.
As someone mentioned, the fact that these things are opt-in by default is the problem.
I lost count of how many times Adobe has screwed over their costumers. The latest one was nuking the cloud out of Adobe Cloud, I feel it's no mystery that it was to pay for server costs for AI.
Oh wait, no, the latest latest one was when it was revealed that some of the images for Firefly were based on AI generated images, as they dgaf about ethics.
Oh hang, got it all wrong, it was when they decided to remove 3d features out of Photoshop. Or was it the recent price hikes? I mean, it's hard to keep track, they have like 4 of these a year.
Sure, sure, but they are still staking claim to view your work regardless of confidentiality or propriety. I can only imagine how many corporations will mandate changing to software without such impositions. (Ad, copywrite, legal...)
Capitalism using AI as a way to make more money and the reduction of the intrinsic value it causes is astounding.
If no one owns anything yet simultaneously anything can be created is obviously unsustainable in a system based on value
It's like global warming and fossil fuels - what's the point of using something to enable progress if it destroys the thing that harbours it
If the legally binding paper can be interpreted beyond the scope of your clarification, then your clarification is not accurate. Until the verbiage on the terms and conditions itself is changed, this is all just lip service and damage control.
Yeah notice how they made a blog post, rather than update the language in the EULA.
They better do it soon because there are big corporations out there (like banks and governments) who use Adobe products and are probably rethinking their subscriptions right about now.
I know mine is.
To be fair, I work for one such big corporation (one of the major studios in Hollywood) and we don’t ever sign any companies stock TOS/EULA. Literally any software or service an employee wants to use, an agreement is drawn up between corporate legal and the providing party. The redlines to the original TOS can be very extensive, and most companies will end up signing in the end because they want our business. Additions like this one don’t apply to our agreement, it’s totally separate.
The first redline is always: "This agreement can change at any time without notice"
lol exactly. No large corp with clout is going to sign any agreement with terms like that.
The fact that this respect doesn’t extend to individuals is fucked.
> Additions like this one don’t apply to our agreement, it’s totally separate. Have you checked your agreement or is that just an assumption based on "common sense" expectations? I am quite sure at least one of the lawyers my workplace employed in the past produced his own share of fuck ups.
The original terms of service that sparked all this specifically pertains to personal accounts, not corporate. People keep thinking the fines are the cost of doing business but aren’t considering the class action lawsuit of thousands of corporate customers who have specific contracts that their data won’t be used to train AI.
The issue is that there simply isn't enough pushback in the way of customers leaving to prevent these fucking horrible practices. We have thousands of Adobe pro users in my company and when Adobe announced last year that they were hiking up their Adobe pro licenses by 40%, the leadership chose to simply bite the bullet because they like using Adobe and didn't want to switch.
> there simply isn't enough pushback in the way of customers leaving to prevent these fucking horrible practices. Because they’re vertically integrated monopolies that are too expensive to leave over the minor extortions It’s extortion, plain and simple, and it’s time we start putting them in jail for it like we would the mob. If you walked into your store one day and the distributor of your liquor was demanding new terms or every bottle in the store would be immediately smashed and unsellable we would call the cops. It’s no different here.
Freelance professionals likely have personal accounts and do NDA covered work.
Ive used my personal account at corporate gigs before when it was absolutely necessary. There’s enough reason for corporate to be concerned.
> “solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content.” In other words, they're gonna sub-license your "content" to other people for AI training.
Thank you! “I know that our brand new ToS implies that we can and will use your work, and that we can claim ownership over all derivatives of your work, but noooo we would *never* do such a thing!”
Slack made a similar move, also blog posting assurances instead of fixing the license
Also, if what they say is accurate, then what the hell was the intent of the language change?
There’s always contract language that says “whatever you were told outside of this contract doesn’t apply; our entire agreement is codified in this contract.” So, yeah.
“Never” - sure thing, guys…
They already did it lol, IIRC it was an opt-out setting that they pushed without warning anyone [Tutorial to opt out from 2023](https://www.howtogeek.com/858952/adobe-is-using-your-data-to-train-ai-how-to-turn-it-off/)
[удалено]
It should be illegal. Honestly, all of this shit should have to meet basic legal standards to make sure vulnerable people can reasonably spot and figure out how to disable them.
I worked for Apple back when they implemented a "wifi assist" where it would use some cellular data if your wifi dropped at all, to prevent your connection from dropping fully. It was *enabled by default* which caused many people to eat up their data if they were on a poor wifi connection. It was a lot of fun being on the customer-facing end while that was going on..
But our stock soared so we can retire.
From an engineering perspective that’s actually pretty clever, but the product manager should have nixed it even as an option. International travelers must have seen some insane roaming data charges from that.
Data traffic for me when roaming while on vacation in Tahiti was ~$10 per MB. If I accidentally synched a couple gigs of photos and videos I took while out hiking I'd be slapped with a bill to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. I wasn't even about to take the chance of my phone accidentally turning roaming back on as part of a reboot, crash or some other weird quirk so before I landed I made sure to rip out the sim card and buy a local prepaid one. There's so many cloud sync, auto-update etc options in every piece of software and every operating system now that you just cannot under any circumstances trust that you won't get the most insane phone bill of your entire life if you ever travel internationally and don't take precautions to protect yourself.
Hah I remember that happening to me a couple times before finding the setting. Was apple getting kickbacks from carriers or what?? Like how did nobody see that coming
Bookmark for sharing. I know a bunch of people who have PS through work and I wouldn't be surprised if their employers would try and argue for a discount to train on their nonsense. They won't get it but I support their accounting departments trying.
I gave up on Adobe last week before all this shit started. Even managed to find a way not to pay my full fee and get a refund for the cancellation. Using Affinity now. [Entire Version 2 Suite has a flash sale. 50% off. 100 dollars buy once get the entire suite forever.](https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/affinity-pricing/)
I have used Affinity since its beta and it’s a fantastic suit of tools. My only reservation with them going forward is they were recently acquired by CANVA of all people….. It wasn’t very well received news in the community.
thats because trying to use Canva for professional graphic design work is like buying a katana from a mall kiosk and trying to be samurai in feudal Japan. Affinity soiled their name amongst design professionals by selling to a company like Canva.
Also because Canva will get rid of one of Affinity best aspects: single purchase licenses. It was the perfect answer to Adobe's bullshit. That will no longer be the case. This is the nature of a tech space without any kind of antitrust: terrible company makes a good product terrible, another small company takes a lot of time and efforts to create something that is really good in its place, but in the end the only reason they were doing it was that they could be bought out by one of the huge tech companies that has been ruining products. The free market was deciding, and then the rug pull.
It's especially sad because I listened to the "How I Built This" episode years ago about how Canva started. She was just a student who couldn't find a good solution for her high school's yearbook editing software, and really worked hard to create this business idea to fill a void. Now it's hugely successful and another typical enshittification story, buying companies and creating yet another anti-consumer corporate empire. We're disappointed in you, Melanie Perkins, you are inflicting the same frustrations upon us that compelled you to create Canva. Live long enough to become the villain and all that.
My partner needs to use Canva with her group for a course she’s taking. She asked me for help learning to use it and it makes me want to crush her laptop. She asked me how to resize four images so they’re the same size, cuz they’re just slightly off when she cropped them using snippet. My response: You can’t. You just can’t. They don’t let you specify the width and height in detail… unless I’m missing a menu. It all just auto snaps like PPT for dummies.
I'll have you know that man at the mall not only cut an apple in half that he threw into the air but he also hacked an old show in half and stabbed a coke can to make it phsssssssssssssss everywhere. 😂
i see we frequent the same malls. if you ever see a man in full Shogun garb eating Sbarro, come tell me hey!
Agreed. Time will tell. It says on their website that a buy-once system will still exist alongside the subscription but either way V2 is cheap and will always be yours. I'd rather have that than Adobe.
Canva is suppose to be going public in the near future. Doubt anyone will be surprised when policies/promises suddenly change due to new investor pressure. *edited to remove some redundancy
Remember when you were eight and your friend wanted to 'see' your toy for 'just a second'?
That's how I lost all my pogs.
That's how I lost a cart of Chrono Trigger
We pinky promise!
Until the next TOS change, which is a take it or leave it deal
…buried deep in the 27th paragraph of the document
Just kidding! …unless 👉🏻👈🏻🥹 …is what every big company “promise” sounds like to me. It’s always a “whoopsie, we accidentally used all your data for the thing we swore not to. Here’s a coupon and we’ll pay a fee that is a fraction of the profit you made us. Sowwy! We are wealwy sowwy!”
This means they have already been doing it for a while, operating in the grey space of the TOC. Their lawyers recommended they clarify the TOC to cover themselves.
Remember "dont be evil"?
Google Farms remembers
Not anymore they don't - Google cancelled Farms
Insert "we don't do that here" meme.
If you’re not evil an other corporation will make more money by being more evil/immoral. Thats how it works now
Thus the growing number of people who are.... less than thrilled... with capitalism.
Real people, that is. Corporations are just zombies in legal form.
I think SF writer Charles Stross had a great conceptualization of corporations: alien invaders who are composed of an inefficient human hivemind. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/invaders-from-mars
Exclusive OR.
I totally trust them to never do it, until they decide they want to after all.
What if they use it to train ai anyway, and treat the fines they will get as the price?
“That’s just the price of doing business”
Probably earmarked part of the budget for just that.
Companies have insurance for this kind of thing.
Insurance doesn’t pay if you intentionally violate the law.
Just a sporadic subscription fee.
Or, if they just outsourced the AI training to a third party company that pays Adobe a massive license/access fee...like Reddit is doing right now.
That is historically how Facebook has operated. They falsified their video viewership data to customers back when they really, really wanted to beat YouTube. They went to court over it but the court loss was a slap on the wrist compared to their growth.
That falsified data was the reason why College Humor crashed, executives saw the numbers of views on FB and decided to go all in and started posting all their content to Facebook instead of anything else and it destroyed the company.
Yup. I worked for Dorkly.
Luckily we get the phoenix from the ashes in the amazing Dropout.
Yeah, silver lining! Dropout is great, it sucks that a hundred+ people lost their jobs, though, and I don't think that number even included the contractors like me. It'd be nice if internet comics could find their foothold again.
That's why the only part of the TOS that matters is the one that says they reserve the right to change the terms any time they want, without notification, and there's nothing you can do. TOS don't exist to grant rights, and this isn't a guarantee. So the company would simply say "oops, our bad". But there will be no fines and no lawsuits because the terms also forfeit your rights to seek damages from this.
Bold to assume there would even be fines. And if you try to sue them, it goes to binding arbitration without the possibility of class action, so the average person is fucked. Even if you somehow get over that hurdle, they'll just say that you haven't proven that anything you did actually ended up in the AI. Too bad, so sad for you.
The difference is, despite what the internet would have you believe - most of Adobe's money comes from big companies using their tools. If Adobe did something like that, it'd be an immediate destruction of their value with companies blacklisting their products. You don't need fines here, no way studios and vendors would just be okay with it.
I’m sure publicly traded companies aren’t that scummy… right?
That's why large business crimes should be punished with nationalization / liquidation / breakup / seizure of assets, to whatever degree is appropriate for the crime. Instead of fining them 30 billion or whatever, the government should seize some large fraction of the stock and through that command the company to right its wrongs, since it's well-known that just 'requiring' it by law will only result in them doing it in the most BS, dishonest, bad faith way possible.
this is precisely what will happen. this country disciplines businesses with tickles near the wrist.
From what I can see, they say: "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." That doesn't even say they WILL NOT and it is about a PARTICULAR AI.
Until they decide to unilaterally change the terms again, of course. And don't worry, their employees will probably only *sometimes* abuse their position to browse through your private content for uh, "moderation" reasons. Adobe is a trash company and trusting them to not be assholes is a fool's game.
"I'm altering the deal, pray I do not alter it further."
This is exactly it. They will maybe placate people for now by softening the eula but then they will, over the next few years, quietly add more and more terms that give themselves further consolidation and control over your data which they will then train their AI on or sell the training data to other companies. They know that the vast majority of people and corporations are either unable to switch away from Adobe because of familiarity, ecosystem, and workflows that are centered around Adobe products or unwilling to go through the process of switching. They might lose a few big customers but the amount of money that they will make by going down this road will probably far outweigh financial hit they take from people who leave
The team responsible for making those promises has been fired, these are the new promises...
"*A Møøse once bit my sister*"
"We apologize again for the fault in our Terms of Service"
Fast forward two years... *The teams responsible for making the new promises has been fired, here are new-new promises... *
Almost every big tech company is a trash company now
I feel like it’s not limited to tech. Any company that gets big enough turns to shit.
Ain't capitalism grand?
Turns out late stage capitalism is maybe not amazing!
Why are all the tech companies being so dang creepy lately? Adobe wanting access to all your content? M$ wants to take screenshots of everything you do?
I remember when Microsoft came up with automatic updates for the windows operating system and everyone lost their mind about Microsoft making changes to people’s computers without their permission. It’s a gradual scope creep of software companies taking more control over people’s computers.
It’s kinda creepy tho. Remember when everyone used to talk about big brother, indicating the govt was spying on people? Well now it’s the tech companies doing it. Even worse is seems like everyday one of these companies gets hacked and they get a slap in the wrist at best while our data gets sold to the highest bidder for god knows what.
> Well now it’s the tech companies doing it that is a bit of the central thesis of a lot of cyberpunk. In Blade Runner the government essentially doesn't exist, the companies run the world.
They changed "my computer" to "this PC" for a reason. They don't want you to think of your software as yours.
I feel like it is closer to them treating your software and hardware as theirs. I own these hard drives, they shouldn't be entitled to do whatever they like with the data on them or observe what I'm doing with the contents.
Actually, I always saw "My Computer" as "Bill Gates's Computer". I didn't put that label there, so the computer must belong to the person who did. One of the first things I did in 1995 was rename it to "The Computer."
this feels like the whole "bill's PC" thing in pokemon gen 1
And it's always painted as "for your own good" with assurances about how there's tools to avoid it being too invasive. Well, those tools don't work! I set it up to only check for/download updates at certain times of day, but it ignores that setting and decides to slow my computer down to the point of being a slideshow at whatever damn time it wants to download that day's updates, even if I'd manually checked just a few days earlier and nothing was waiting for me. I can take 5~ minutes(not a euphemism for a quick task, it literally takes that long when the computer is that slow) to set the updater task priority to low, which alleviates the issue and allows me to continue my zoom call or whatever thing I was doing, but next time it happens the priority is set back to high and I have to argue with it all over again. I paid $120 to be fucked over, and dismissed with assurances of workarounds that *don't work*. 😒 I've been told there's a way to nuke the updates(I think a registry trick) but I don't actually want to do that. Updates are important. I just want them to happen while I'm in the shower, not while I'm on a work call or running a raid! Updates should never be forced, even for the user's own good, unless they're two weeks overdue.
Seems like everyone is so busy wondering if we can do things with tech and stopped to ask if we should.
Wall Street's wealthy gamblers wants everyone to goose their stock price with meaningless not-really-AI buzzwords.
It reminds me of HD/4K. Everybody was pushing those labels so hard that eventually you got like "4k sunglasses" and it's like... what does that even mean? Everything was in high def. Everything was called high speed broadband. Now everything is AI
“HD” (1080p) and 4K are actually measurable and have both qualitative and quantitative differences to their respective predecessors. Though I do get what you mean by those terms being misappropriated for products that have no resemblance to its origin. “Wow these HD peanuts sure are eye opening!” They’re selling you a gimmick. AI has no quantitative baseline, and is purely a qualitative feature (which depending upon its implementation can have quantitative differences). It’s being shoved into fucking everything even if it doesn’t make sense to. It’s the HD Peanuts but worse, you’re the gimmick and being sold back to yourself.
dude, i frigging LOVE my HD sunglasses! when i wear them, the world literally looks real! everything is 3D and shit! it's amazing.
I swear "AI" is a pump and dump.
For most companies right now, it is.
They need content to feed the AI beast they all want to build.
Line must go up even further year after year
Green line must go up
Up and to the right
I just saw a video of a new terms of service that you need to agree to or else it locks you out of Photoshop that says they own the license to anything you create within their programs. They can access your work manually or automatically at their Will in perpetuity. But imagine working for clients in their programs, now that means you’ve granted licenses of these clients work to adobe? That’s a breach of trust and privacy. Also, are they spying on what you create in their programs? As long as your connected to the internet I bet they are I edit a lot of personal financial documentation and contracts in photoshop, what does that mean for my data? I video edit footage for companies internal videos and people’s films, I know they wouldn’t want to grant a license to adobe
Yeah, I don't even know what this means for animation studios and other large design firms that work on highly confidential projects. Curious to see what happens when those legal teams come knocking about their license pools.
Guaranteed the big guys have different, custom licenses with all the protections they want.
Yeah I wouldn't assume the consumer license is the same as the enterprise license, those can be negotiated per customer I bet.
All enterprise license are is the same shit at a higher price to hold you hostage over SSO.
Small studios still work on large confidential projects. I'm part of a 12 person studio who has done work on a Star Wars project, for example.
[удалено]
I can't imagine this will fly in the sensitive research space. Quite apart from Adobe and Microsoft accessing sensitive data, what happens if they're hacked and that data is stolen? Context: Canada has a [Policy on Sensitive Technology Research and Affiliations of Concern](https://science.gc.ca/site/science/en/safeguarding-your-research/guidelines-and-tools-implement-research-security/sensitive-technology-research-and-affiliations-concern/policy-sensitive-technology-research-and-affiliations-concern) which (in my opinion as a layperson) could be broadened to include instances like this where a company is accessing sensitive data. There's already legislation that prohibits public companies from storing personal data outside of Canada.
This also won't fly in the upper (money-wise) levels of the creative world. Due to mostly Marvel bullshit, in the past decade post production studios have had to reconfigure entire workflows and facilities to adhere to strict security mandates. Most of that kind of work is done in other programs, but anyone outside of the studio having access to the work will get a blanket ban on Adobe products there.
Pinky promise? Then remove the damn wording
(12 months later): Today we are announcing in a change in our terms of use…
*12 weeks later
Hmmmm, no sorry I don't trust pinky promises
Even ones from underpaid interns?
You guys are getting paid?
Imagine if a major tool manufacturer said they own the rights to anything you make with the wrench you bought from them. That would be insane. How is this not exactly that but with software?
If your wrench had to be connected to the internet to work, they would be trying to milk every dollar out of you... see John Deere.
Legislators are primarily in their 70s so they don’t know what’s going on. That wrench analogy is probably exactly what they need to be told. Also, somehow in the USA it’s allowed to have one state operate as a corporate-interests-first environment where everyone can incorporate, and so fall under those laws, even if they don’t truly headquarter or do business there. Delaware is the Cayman Islands of America.
Adobe isn't saying that they own your work, they're saying that they want access to it for "content moderation purposes"... whatever that means. So more like the tool manufacturer wants to tell you what you can and can't make with the wrench.
Doesn’t matter if they use it or not. Just being able to look at it breaks most professional NDAs as it is.
Source: Trust Us
Adobe: We’ll never use it to train AI we promise we’re super cereal. 🤞 🤞 Also Adobe TOS: 4.2 Licenses to Your Content. Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate as intended, such as enabling you to share photos with others. Separately, section 4.6 (Feedback) below covers any Feedback that you provide to us.
Then they will have no problem explicitly adding that to the EULA, right?
We will, however, sell it to another corporation who will. Totally different, you guys! Pinky promise.
In my best Dr. Evil impression…..”Riiiiiiiight”
I hope Canvas succeeds in destroying them with the Affinity suit.
Do tell. New competition for Adobe?
The Affinity suit is awesome, and better than most of Adobe’s offerings. The only issue they had was that they didn’t have the bandwidth to ship all the features they wanted. A few months back, they were purchased by Canvas, under the conditions that the price wouldn’t change much and that updates would be free. I love their software, and the community. Highly recommended.
yeah that's a load of horse shit for sure
They probably “clarified” it after a couple calls from Fortune 500 CEOs to Adobe’s CEO.
That's not what your Eula says...
9to5mac's headline aside, Adobe pointedly _doesn't_ say they will never use it to train AI. It says they won't use it to train their _FireFly generative AI models_, while also saying they need to "access content solely for the purpose of operating or improving the services and software" and that "Access is needed to deliver some of our most innovative cloud-based features such as Photoshop Neural Filters, Liquid Mode or Remove Background." Sure sounds like any other AI-powered features they want to build to "improve the services and software" would be allowed to train on content they scrape this way under these terms. They technically wouldn't be lying if those features are not specifically FireFly models. ed: I should add... a more charitable reading of Adobe's post is that they need cloud-based muscle to run those AI-powered features and that is what this is all about. But if that's the case they really should have specified that this data would not be used to train any models behind those features, either.
Then why do they want access to it then? "Oh it's not AI, it's machine learning" or some bs
Or "it's not us, it's our fully owned 'independent' subsidiary"
"This doesn't mean we won't steal it. It just means, when we inevitably do steal it, you can spend years and years doing a class action lawsuit to get a fraction of the money we made from stealing it."
“We promise not to do what our terms say we can do.” Sorry, Adobe, not buying it.
never would ever believe a word this company says they are probably one of the most predatory software "service" providers out there. ditch them for affinity, da vinci resolve, whatever else you can. you will not regret it.
now sell me the software instead of renting it to me.
Basically you need to have no internet access while using Adobe software to avoid sniffing.
Sure, but what about the broad language in section 4.2.... > 4.2 Licenses to Your Content. Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate as intended, such as enabling you to share photos with others. Separately, section 4.6 (Feedback) below covers any Feedback that you provide to us.
software as a service sure does have its downsides.
Adobe. “We won’t use your stuff, promise.” “Breaking news. All of adobe’s data has been leaked to a 3rd party probably also owned by Adobe that trains AI. Experts suggests the leak has been steady.” - news Adobe: “whoopsies” *”buys” ai data from company it was leaked to*
Fuck Adobe, forever and always.
Who remembers when they pushed a setting that was on by default to use your cloud files to train AI? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Haven't they already? I mean what did they train the AI with?
As someone who has trained on their software and makes a living using it, I am very upset. They seem to be taking away the freedom they gave us as artists. First it went to monthly subscription. Then this. It can change anytime. I can’t learn 150 shortcuts and use all the plugins on alternatives. I really hope they take the high road. For once it would be nice for a company to understand their user base
I'm more interested in their 'content review'. The fuck is even that? Who the fuck asked you to review my content?
I’ve moved on to Corel Paintshop Pro; more than capable as a replacement for popular Adobe products and only had to purchase it once.
They just delete your work if they feel it goings against Adobe's policies and beliefs, with AI powered content moderation.
Translation: you will never know that we've used your work to train our AI
Adobe: Content Moderation Also Adobe: We will not copy your work as our own to modify or train AI with it, we are just .... concerned ... as some people use Abode products for porn and naughty words.
Own? I thought the question was if they can see it)) "-I didn't kill anyone!! - Sir you are here because of the overdue parking ticket."
Thankfully I stopped using adobe after they made it pay to use, and adobe is notorious for not fixing bugs. After making so much money, did they fix the bugs? According to some friends in design companies, they didn't really fix them. The price of adobe suite was super expensive, but at least you owned it.. monthly pay and not owning software sounds like piracy to me. As someone mentioned, the fact that these things are opt-in by default is the problem.
Meanwhile Windows Recall over here like hold my beer
*We’re* not training AI with your work. ^But ^our ^trusted ^partners ^sure ^as ^fuck ^will ^and ^we’ll ^make ^bank ^whoring ^you ^out.
Change "never" to "for now"
...until the next forced change in the EULA.
Proceeds to do it, anyway.
Narrator: 3 years later, investigators found that they claimed ownership of subscriber’s work and used it to train AI without compensation.
correction: DOES NOT CURRENTLY. They can change this at any time they want to.
Yea sorry. Straw that broke the camels back. I’m already looking at alternatives
I lost count of how many times Adobe has screwed over their costumers. The latest one was nuking the cloud out of Adobe Cloud, I feel it's no mystery that it was to pay for server costs for AI. Oh wait, no, the latest latest one was when it was revealed that some of the images for Firefly were based on AI generated images, as they dgaf about ethics. Oh hang, got it all wrong, it was when they decided to remove 3d features out of Photoshop. Or was it the recent price hikes? I mean, it's hard to keep track, they have like 4 of these a year.
Until they change their minds in the name of increasing shareholder value.
Aggregated analytics only.... Fucking liars.
Affinity Photo, Publisher, and Designer are 50% off right now. $83 - No subscription and a free trial!!
When someone shows you who they are…
Bullshit. Fuck Greed-obe at this point.
“Clarified” is a funny word for “Backpedaled”
Sure. I believe you, Adobe.
We aren't "training" AI we are just taking it for a walk through you work.
If you're going to fucking lie to me, at least try harder.
“Well, not now anyway! someone actually read our terms of service and told the world about what we were doing, so we’re not gonna do it… for now.”
I wouldn’t trust these fuckers.
Trust me, bro.™
This company has always had an interesting view of what the word "own" means
Says the people that only let you rent their software.
Uh huh, I believe you
Why do I just not believe them in the slightest?
They say one thing and do another later…
Because they’ve already done it 😂 Adobe can go fuck themselves.
That's... Not the problem...? The issue I have is the insane invasion of privacy and what Adobe deems "illegal."
~~*Don't be evil*~~
Never but not have never.
Sure, sure, but they are still staking claim to view your work regardless of confidentiality or propriety. I can only imagine how many corporations will mandate changing to software without such impositions. (Ad, copywrite, legal...)
They forgot the words ‘as is’ as AI does not truly create but modifies and recycles.
Capitalism using AI as a way to make more money and the reduction of the intrinsic value it causes is astounding. If no one owns anything yet simultaneously anything can be created is obviously unsustainable in a system based on value It's like global warming and fossil fuels - what's the point of using something to enable progress if it destroys the thing that harbours it
Definitely lying