An Updated Terms of Use popup that appeared for Photoshop users earlier this week, led many to believe that Adobe would have access to the projects they were working on, such as confidential work being carried out under NDA.

The Updated Terms of Use message detailing the changes stated that Adobe “may access your content through both automated and manual methods, such as for content review”.

The small print then stated: “Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content.”

Creatives quickly voiced their discontent and concerns online, with many also believing Adobe planned to use their work as training data for the software giant’s AI tools.

Users were locked out of the app unless they agreed to the new terms.

In the face of the online outcry, yesterday (6 June), Adobe’s Communications Team filed a blog post to clarify the company’s position.

It stated: “The focus of this update was to be clearer about the improvements to our moderation processes that we have in place. 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 asserted that it does not train Firefly Gen AI models on customer content; and also stated that it will never assume ownership of a customer’s work.

“We appreciate our customers who reached out to ask these questions which has given us an opportunity to clarify our terms and our commitments. We will be clarifying the Terms of Use acceptance customers see when opening applications.”

The full statement can be found here: A clarification on Adobe Terms of Use.

A number of people posting on X about the controversy also said they had already, or would be, switching to Affinity’s alternative software products instead.

Some users also recommended changing their Adobe settings so ‘Content Analysis’ was switched to off, work was stored locally rather than in Adobe’s cloud, and also to encrypt any sensitive files if using cloud storage.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan has the option to “take your photos further with generative AI” from £10.42/month.