It’s one of those annoyances that ruins the work day. You open Photoshop, Illustrator, or Premiere Pro to pick up where you left off on a project with a deadline to meet, and you’re hit with a message from Adobe asking you to accept the new terms and conditions before you can continue working. .
Many people who faced the situation this morning will not have time to make another cup of tea, sit down and read the small print and will have just clicked it so they can get to work. But those who read the finer details are raising some concerns (see our Adobe software list for a rundown of the company’s apps). Adobe assures me that nothing has changed in practice, but I can understand that users are surprised.
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Updated Adobe Terms of Use (click right for sections of concern)(Image credit: Adobe)
(Image credit: Adobe)
Adobe’s updated terms of use sent to users include clarification that the company may access user content through both manual and automated methods for some reasons. That’s news to some users, who didn’t imagine the software giant would be able to automatically see all their work.
In the updated terms of use, Adobe continues to clarify that it can “access, view or listen to” the content “only in limited ways and only as permitted by law.” This includes reviewing comments or support requests, detecting or preventing fraud, security, legal or technical issues. It also notes that it has the right to remove content found to violate Adobe’s terms.
Some of the described situations are understandable, for example in the case of support requests. But there’s also a line that says Adobe may “analyze your content and customer fonts… using techniques such as machine learning to improve our Services and Software and user experience. That sounds pretty broad.
“I feel like using machine learning to ‘moderate content’ is a sneaky way of saying ‘we’re installing spyware to train machine learning out of everything you do,'” one person wrote on X. As well as privacy issues and concerns that Adobe could use user processes to train AI, some Creative Cloud users are concerned that the terms effectively mean they are breaking their agreements, including NDA and WFH contracts, with customers.
Hey @Photoshop @Adobe, The new agreement you’re forcing Photoshop users to sign (even cancel) requires the user to violate every NDA and WFH contractual agreement at every media studio, production or entertainment company I know of . WTH? @tvaziri @MysteryVFXSuper @vfxlaw pic.twitter.com/wA2oBYlVDgJune 5, 2024
So I’m reading this, right? @Adobe @Photoshop I can’t use Photoshop unless I’m okay with you having full access to everything I create with it, INCLUDING NDA’s work? pic.twitter.com/ZYbnFCMlkEJune 5, 2024
Also, it’s ridiculous that I can’t even accept your support chat to question this if I don’t agree to these terms beforehand.June 5, 2024
Users have asked how they should proceed if they do not wish to accept the new terms as it appears that it is not possible to cancel a subscription without first accepting. Some people have also questioned whether Adobe’s access to user content includes files stored on users’ own computers as well as those in Adobe’s cloud storage offering. The company assures me that this is not the case.
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When I contacted Adobe for clarification, the company said that despite the request to accept the updated wording, nothing has actually changed in its policy. He said: “This policy has been in place for many years. As part of our commitment to being transparent with our customers, we added clarifying examples earlier this year to our Terms of Use about when Adobe can access user content. Adobe accesses User Content for a variety of reasons, including the ability to deliver some of our most innovative cloud-based features, such as Photoshop Neural Filters and Background Removal in Adobe Express, and to take action against prohibited content. Adobe does not access, view or listen to content that is stored locally on any user’s device.”
Responding to a user’s concerns on X, Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer and executive vice president for Adobe Creative Cloud, wrote: “I agree that the wording of the summary is unclear and I have provided those legal comments.
“The current TOS are similar to any other modern cloud-featured software provider that requires the service to be able to ‘access’ a file – like when a user wants to open it in the Photoshop web app, needs indexed files for search purposes, chooses to Share a document for online review with a colleague, automatic tagging in Lightroom, or other cloud-enabled capabilities, and many of these capabilities require a “for-the-purpose-only” license of operation” as stated in the Adobe TOS for over a decade, but trust and transparency couldn’t be more important these days, and we need to be clear when it comes to summarizing the terms of service in these windows.
As Scott says, the timing comes at a particularly sensitive time. The update comes just as other platforms are provoking concerns among artists, including confirmation that Instagram uses images to train AI.
