Adobe to update vague AI terms after users threaten to cancel subscriptions

Adobe has promised to update its terms of service to make it "abundantly clear" that the company will "never" train generative AI on creators' content after days of customer backlash, with some saying they would cancel Adobe subscriptions over its vague terms.

Users got upset last week when an Adobe pop-up informed them of updates to terms of use that seemed to give Adobe broad permissions to access user content, take ownership of that content, or train AI on that content. The pop-up forced users to agree to these terms to access Adobe apps, disrupting access to creatives' projects unless they immediately accepted them.

For any users unwilling to accept, canceling annual plans could trigger fees amounting to 50 percent of their remaining subscription cost. Adobe justifies collecting these fees because a "yearly subscription comes with a significant discount."

On X (formerly Twitter), YouTuber Sasha Yanshin wrote that he canceled his Adobe license "after many years as a customer," arguing that "no creator in their right mind can accept" Adobe's terms that seemed to seize a "worldwide royalty-free license to reproduce, display, distribute" or "do whatever they want with any content" produced using their software.

"This is beyond insane," Yanshin wrote on X. "You pay a huge monthly subscription, and they want to own your content and your entire business as well. Going to have to learn some new tools."

Adobe's design leader Scott Belsky replied, telling Yanshin that Adobe had clarified the update in a blog post and noting that Adobe's terms for licensing content are typical for every cloud content company. But he acknowledged that those terms were written about 11 years ago and that the language could be plainer, writing that "modern terms of service in the current climate of customer concerns should evolve to address modern day concerns directly."

Yanshin has so far not been encouraged by any of Adobe's attempts to clarify its terms, writing that he gives "precisely zero f*cks about Adobe’s clarifications or blog posts."

"You forced people to sign new Terms," Yanshin told Belsky on X. "Legally, they are the only thing that matters."

Another user in the thread using an anonymous X account also pushed back, writing, "Point to where it says in the terms that you won’t use our content for LLM or AI training? And state unequivocally that you do not have the right to use our work beyond storing it. That would go a long way."

"Stay tuned," Belsky wrote on X. "Unfortunately, it takes a process to update a TOS," but "we are working on incorporating these clarifications."

Belsky co-authored the blog this week announcing that Adobe's terms would be updated by June 18 after a week of fielding feedback from users.

"We’ve never trained generative AI on customer content, taken ownership of a customer’s work, or allowed access to customer content beyond legal requirements," Adobe's blog said. "Nor were we considering any of those practices as part of the 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."

Adobe to put terms in plain language, emphasize opt-outs

Adobe's blog breaks down what changes are already planned for the next update to its terms.

Perhaps most critically in today's world of rapid AI developments, Adobe will add a statement "to reassure people" that, as a legal obligation, "we don’t train generative AI on customer content."

Adobe said updates would also "make it clear in the license grant section that any license granted to Adobe to operate its services will not supersede your ownership rights."

Additionally, the terms will clarify that users can always opt out of participating in Adobe's "product improvement program" that leverages "machine learning (NOT generative AI)" to process "usage data and content characteristics to improve your product experience and develop features like masking and background removal."

This opt-out option will be "emphasized," Adobe's blog said, and "licenses required to operate our products on your behalf" will be "narrowly tailored" and "now include plain English examples of what they mean and why they are required."

However, some creative professionals were just as concerned with terms allowing Adobe to scan cloud-hosted content. The update to Adobe's terms prompting backlash was intended to "ensure we are not hosting any child sexual abuse material (CSAM)," Adobe's blog said. However, the terms could also seemingly allow Adobe to access content that some users were legally not allowed to share with anyone due to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with clients. For designers working on games or movies for studios paranoid about leaks, this provision would seemingly be non-negotiable and force them to use other tools to finish projects.

The planned "area of clarification" in Adobe's terms regarding this concern is perhaps the least reassuring to some users since Adobe's blog does not acknowledge the conflict with NDAs.

Instead, Adobe's blog only said that terms would be clarified to say that Adobe's automated content scans will not trigger human reviews unless "our automated system flags an issue" that requires an investigation. The blog reiterated that artists can avoid automated content scans by storing content locally.

According to a February analysis by Statista, Adobe leads the graphics software market, with Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator together commanding about an 80 percent global market share. The Verge noted that for designers who feel locked into using Adobe's popular tools—and, as Vice reported in 2019, increasingly frustrated with subscription-based pricing models—tension has risen as Adobe has started experimenting with AI through its Firefly AI model.

The Firefly AI model was trained on Adobe Stock images in an effort to avoid ethical concerns by creating an image generator referencing only licensed and public domain content. But some artists have flagged images referencing their works on Adobe Stock's platform, The Verge reported, sparking clashes between Adobe and artists. Most recently, the photographer Ansel Adams' estate scolded Adobe for selling imitations of his iconic photos, The Verge reported.

Adobe's blog said that the company recognizes that "trust must be earned," while promising to "continue innovating ways to protect artists" from AI training on their works and generating outputs replicating their unique styles. Adobe's efforts so far include creating Content Credentials that properly attribute works to creators and "enable the addition of 'do not train' tags for images shared online." New terms coming soon will align with this ethos, Adobe said.

"In a world where customers are anxious about how their data is used and how generative AI models are trained, it is the responsibility of companies that host customer data and content to declare their policies not just publicly but in their legally binding Terms of Use," Adobe's blog post said.

It's clear that Adobe understands how important it is to have legal terms preventing AI training because the company has additional generative AI terms that specifically prohibit users from training on Adobe's generative AI features.

"No AI/ML Training," Adobe's additional terms say. "You must not, and must not allow third parties to, use any content, data, output or other information received or derived from any generative AI features, including any Outputs, to directly or indirectly create, train, test, or otherwise improve any machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence systems, including any architectures, models, or weights."

Perhaps observing the clear language used in these additional terms will help Adobe's legal team draft equally clear terms protecting users from the same harms.

Yanshin declined to comment on Adobe's planned changes until he has reviewed what the next iteration of terms say. For artists who dropped Adobe over the confusion, reviving subscriptions will likely require terms that explicitly grant protections that so far Adobe has only promised in blogs.