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Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) on Friday sought to quell criticism that the updated terms and conditions for its Creative Cloud suite of photo and video editing apps gave the company access to people’s creative work.
The outcry on social media started the day before, when Creative Cloud users tried to open their apps and discovered they were locked out until they agreed to let Adobe “access content through both automated and manual methods, such as for content review.”
The negative reaction was swift.
“Hey @Photoshop what the hell was that new agreement you forced us to sign this morning that locked our app until we agree to it,” Duncan Jones, director of movies including “Moon” and “Source Code,” said in a tweet. “We are working on a bloody movie here, and NO, you don’t suddenly have the right to any of the work we are doing on it because we pay you to use Photoshop.”
Adobe on Friday issued a statement saying it doesn’t own the creative works of its users, and that it doesn’t use the content to train its Firefly artificial intelligence technology.
“The focus of this update was to be clearer about the improvements to our moderation processes that we have in place,” Adobe (ADBE) said in a blog post. “Given the explosion of Generative AI and our commitment to responsible innovation, we have added more human moderation to our content submissions review processes.”
Adobe (ADBE) is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on Thursday after the close of regular trading in New York.