NewsUC&C10 Jun 2024 · 3 min read

Users Fear Adobe Plans to Train Its Firefly AI With Their Data

Adobe has clarified Firefly and Creative Cloud data use after Terms of Use concerns, an issue UC Today readers should watch as AI training policy shifts.

James Stephen

Adobe Firefly AI user data training concerns

Users have expressed concerns that Adobe’s recent changes to its Terms of Use could allow the use of their data to train its AI model.

Adobe’s generative machine learning model, Adobe Firefly, could potentially benefit by ingesting user data to hone its AI creativity capabilities, but the US software company has released a clarification to reassure users that it had no such plans.

Nevertheless, the technology publication TechRadar has suggested that this has not prevented some users from considering cancelling their Adobe subscriptions.

The updated Terms of Use paragraph that caught users’ attention was: “We may access, view or listen to your Content through both automated and manual methods, but only in limited ways and only as permitted by law."

“For example, in order to provide the Services and Software, we may need to access, view or listen to your Content to respond to Feedback or support requests; detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security, legal or technical issues; and enforce the Terms…"

Our automated systems may analyse your Content and Creative Cloud Customer Fonts using techniques such as machine learning in order to improve our Services and Software and the user experience.”

Adobe Defends Data Usage

The new terms, which apply to more than 20 million users of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Suite worldwide, have been interpreted by some to mean that Adobe could use sensitive content, such as information protected by non-disclosure agreements, and users’ creative works for various purposes.

The Adobe Communications Team published an article on its blog pages in an attempt to rectify the situation.

As part of its explanation of its revised Terms of Use, it affirmed that its commitments to customers have not changed, which include not using customer content to train Firefly Gen AI models and never assuming ownership of a customer’s work.

Instead, it maintains that this update to its terms was intended to clarify its improvements to moderation processes. Due to the “explosion” of generative AI, Adobe said it has had to add more human moderation to its content submissions review processes.

How is Firefly Trained?

In the Firefly FAQ pages, Adobe explains where it gets its data from to train Firefly:

The current Firefly generative AI models were trained on a dataset of licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, along with public domain content."

“As Firefly evolves, Adobe is exploring ways for creators to be able to train the machine learning model with their own assets so they can generate content that matches their unique style, branding, and design language without the influence of other creators’ content."

“Adobe will continue to listen to and work with the creative community to address future developments to the Firefly training models.”

Slack AI Uproar

It was a similar story over at the Slack camp last month. The business messaging app updated its AI principles after a controversy emerged over how its customer data was being used to train its machine learning models.

The story broke after an executive at DuckBill Group, Corey Quinn, posted about Slack’s Privacy Principles as they were last week on X. Quinn highlighted that Slack was training its machine learning models on user data and that users have to explicitly opt out of the process.

Debates over data usage related to AI training are likely to become a prevalent issue for unified communications and collaboration platforms in the future.

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