Adobe Changes Terms of Service Again After Social Media Uproar

Following its prior Terms update, many Adobe customers took to social media to denounce the company’s approach, which appeared to grant Adobe a license to use any and all content created by its customers for practically any and all purposes.

I just cancelled my Adobe licence after many years as a customer.

The new terms give Adobe “worldwide royalty-free licence to reproduce, display, distribute” or do whatever they want with any content I produce using their software.

This is beyond insane. No creator in their… pic.twitter.com/8UK3ur3WtH

— Sasha Yanshin (@sashayanshin) June 7, 2024

The updated terms of service, which are set to roll out on June 18, aim to provide clearer guidelines on what Adobe is allowed to do with its customers’ content, according to David Wadhwani, Adobe’s president of digital media.

“We have never trained generative AI on our customers’ 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 told The Verge.

Adobe faced significant scrutiny from creatives over the past week after its customers were alerted to vague language in its terms of service update regarding AI. Customers interpreted this language to mean the company was granting itself permission to access and use customers’ work to train its generative AI models. Although Adobe’s policies around AI training were unchanged, Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer, acknowledged that the wording was “unclear” and emphasized the importance of “trust and transparency.”

“In retrospect, we should have modernized and clarified the terms of service sooner,” Wadhwani said. “We should have proactively narrowed the terms to match what we actually do and better explained our legal requirements.”

Despite the sweet talking and assurances from Adobe, the company’s stock price has taken a huge hit since the controversy erupted online.