While Adobe has emphatically responded to the backlash surrounding its terms of use, and done so in a reasonably effective way, that hasn’t stopped some other companies from taking swings at Adobe. As reported by Y.M. Cinema, Blackmagic Design, known for its cinema cameras, apps, video editing software, and cloud services, has a cheeky “No AI Training” section on its Blackmagic Cloud login page. “We acknowledge that you own your uploaded media. Blackmagic Cloud is not a trick to access your media for AI training. Your media is private and won’t be used to train AI. So you can work with security, knowing your ideas won’t leak publicly via AI,” Blackmagic explains. This section is out of place with the other five on the page, as the rest are all related to features of Blackmagic Cloud and what users can expect to achieve using the cloud platform. Then again, it should come as little surprise that companies are using Adobe’s lousy press as an opportunity to promote desirable aspects of their platforms. Credit: Blackmagic That said, during Adobe’s recent terms of use situation, the company significantly improved its communications surrounding the company’s terms of use. Much like Blackmagic says that users own their content, so does Adobe.
“Your content is your content — you own it, and we don’t,” Adobe explains. “We don’t train generative AI models on your or your customers’ content unless you’ve submitted the content to the Adobe Stock marketplace,” the company adds. As for working with security, as Blackmagic mentions, there was a significant and reasonable concern based on Adobe’s initial communications, which kicked the entire terms of use situation into high gear. Users were worried that Adobe could monitor the content on their devices. “No one but you owns your content, but we need access to your content as necessary to operate Adobe applications and services. We limit our access to very specific purposes,” Adobe says. While there is some automated scanning of content uploaded to Adobe’s servers, the company says it doesn’t “Scan or review content that is stored locally on your device.” As for content stored in the cloud, it is worth noting that Blackmagic reserves the right to remove, modify, or otherwise deal with any “prohibited content” in connection with a person’s use of Blackmagic Cloud. Further, like many companies, Blackmagic has a non-exclusive license in perpetuity to reproduce, use, and otherwise exploit all data and material, including a user’s content, to provide its services.
This is an area where Adobe customers became worried concerning Adobe’s terms of use. While it sounds dastardly, it is boilerplate. “You own your content. But in order to use our products and services, we need you to give us permission to use your content when stored or processed in our cloud. This permission is called a license,” says Adobe. “This license allows us to provide our products and services to you, like if you want to share your content or publish your content on Behance. Because it’s your content — not ours.” The license doesn’t permit Adobe to train generative AI models with user content. Adobe’s terms of use and Blackmagic Cloud’s terms and conditions alike are full of legalese, some of which can seem confusing, strange, and even a bit scary. Adobe has done a good job of including plain-text explainers in its terms of use, and hopefully, other companies will follow suit to ensure that users understand their rights when using software and services. As frustrating as the Adobe terms of use situation was, if one of the consequences is that terms of use agreements become less obtuse, perhaps it will have been worth the headaches.
