Cassandre Coyer and Aruni Soni, Bloomberg Law; Adobe Responds to AI Fears With Plans for Updated Legal Terms
"“As technology evolves, we have to evolve,” Dana Rao, Adobe’s general counsel, said in an interview with Bloomberg Law. “The legal terms have to evolve, too. And that’s really the lesson that we’re sort of internalizing here.”
Over the weekend, some Adobe customers revolted on social media, crying foul at updated terms of use they claimed allowed Adobe to seize their intellectual property and use their data to feed AI models.
The Photoshop and Illustrator maker responded with multiple blog posts over several days seeking to reassure users it wasn’t stealing their content, including a pledge to quickly rewrite its user agreement in clearer language. Rao said Tuesday that Adobe will be issuing updated terms of use on June 18 in which it will specifically state the company doesn’t train its Firefly AI models on its cloud content.
The unexpected online storm around the updates is the latest example of how sweeping technological changes—such as the rise of generative AI—have bolstered users’ fears of copyright violations and privacy invasions. That sentiment is part of the landscape the tech industry must navigate to serve a creator community increasingly on edge.
What happened is “more of a lesson in terms of how to present terms of use and roll out updates in a way that can address or alleviate customer concerns, especially in the era of AI and increased concern over privacy,” said Los Angeles-based advertising attorney Robert Freund."
