News Analysis
The Gist
- Clear communication is essential. Adobe’s vague Terms of Use update led to a significant backlash, underscoring the need for clear and transparent communication with customers.
- Prompt responses can mitigate damage. Adobe's quick response to user concerns and promises to update its Terms of Use demonstrate the importance of timely and proactive customer engagement.
- Will customers be satisfied? Adobe's willingness to modify its policies based on community feedback highlights the value of listening to and acting on customer concerns to maintain trust, but will it be enough to avoid more backlash?
Adobe wants to keep its digital media users happy. It plans to update its Terms of Use for applications, including Photoshop, because of heavy backlash from creatives and designers who called on others to abandon the company over a recent Terms of Use update.
“If you are a professional, if you are under NDA with your clients, if you are a creative, a lawyer, a doctor or anyone who works with proprietary files — it is time to cancel Adobe, delete all the apps and programs. Adobe can not be trusted,” designer “Wetterschneider” posted on X.
Adobe got in front of the rapidly-spreading negative feedback fast. On June 6, Adobe’s press team emailed CMSWire to say that “Adobe has published a blog to provide more clarity around its Terms of Use."
But the backlash persisted. Adobe's press team then on Monday, June 10 in an email to CMSWire shared a blog post and promised updated changes to its Terms of Use by June 18 to be even more clear and address the concerns raised by its community.
“We recently rolled out a re-acceptance of our Terms of Use which has led to concerns about what these terms are and what they mean to our customers,” Adobe’s Scott Belsky and Dana Rao wrote in the June 10 blog post. “This has caused us to reflect on the language we use in our Terms, and the opportunity we have to be clearer and address the concerns raised by the community.”
Belsky followed up in a post on X June 10 in which he said, “Sharing an update coming to Adobe's terms of use next week. As technology evolves, every co's terms of use must also evolve to directly address new concerns on creators' minds. We should have done this sooner, but team is committed to getting it right.”
Why Were Creatives So Upset at Adobe?
So why were Adobe users so upset in the first place? This is what got Wetterschneider and many others vocal: how Adobe said it “may access your content through both automated and manual methods, such as for content review.”
Here it is. If you are a professional, if you are under NDA with your clients, if you are a creative, a lawyer, a doctor or anyone who works with proprietary files - it is time to cancel Adobe, delete all the apps and programs. Adobe can not be trusted. pic.twitter.com/LFnBbDKWLC
— Wetterschneider (@Stretchedwiener) June 5, 2024
The negative posts on X from the vocal design community just kept coming:
Had a conversation with a very good friend this morning, who also happens to be a lawyer, with a veritable ton of Terms of Use/ToS background, and these are her thoughts on the @Adobe kerfuffle. Adobe, stop. #adobe pic.twitter.com/LwTCGCxTFl
— 🎬ChasingPhotography🎥 (@chasingphoto) June 7, 2024
The new @Adobe @Photoshop terms of use requires you to Grant them unrestricted Access to your content, including licensing it to others. This will put you in major legal risk if you continue to use Adobe products. I'm canceling all of my Adobe subscriptions. pic.twitter.com/pZVezLVkZU
— 🏇 Jedi #Kubernaught 🚀 (@HighwayofLife) June 6, 2024
I just cancelled my Adobe licence after many years as a customer.
— Sasha Yanshin (@sashayanshin) June 7, 2024
The new terms give Adobe "worldwide royalty-free licence to reproduce, display, distribute" or do whatever they want with any content I produce using their software.
This is beyond insane. No creator in their… pic.twitter.com/8UK3ur3WtH
“@Adobe I am not ok with your new terms and conditions,” Bay Area artist, content and social media specialist Paula Wirth posted on X on June 7. “I’ve been using your products since Photoshop was released. Why are you treating loyal customers like this?"
Related Article: Adobe's Big Bet on Generative AI Takes Center Stage at Summit
How Adobe First Responded to Backlash (June 6)
It's not surprising Adobe was listening and responded within days to the backlash. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s digital media business represents most of the company's bottom line — $14.2 billion — while its digital experience side of the house generated $4.9 billion in the last fiscal year. Publishing and advertising accounts for the final $300 million for the company valued at $229.5 billion. Adobe’s got a market cap of $206 billion.
Adobe tried to clarify exactly what was updated in its Terms of Use in its first response (June 6):
“The focus of this update was to be clearer about the improvements to our moderation processes that we have in place,” the Adobe Communications Team wrote in the June 6 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. To be clear, Adobe requires a limited license to access content solely for the purpose of operating or improving the services and software and to enforce our terms and comply with law, such as to protect against abusive content.”
Adobe also made promises around the use of generative AI and ownership of a customer’s work:
- Adobe does not train Firefly Gen AI models on customer content. Firefly generative AI models are trained on a dataset of licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content where copyright has expired.
- Adobe will never assume ownership of a customer's work. Adobe hosts content to enable customers to use our applications and services. Customers own their content and Adobe does not assume any ownership of customer work.
Related Article: CX Trends: Full Circle Moments at Adobe Summit
And Another Adobe Blog Post on the Backlash (June 10)
But four days later, Adobe’s press team was at it again, this time promising a change to its Terms of Use in a June 10 blog post. Again, Adobe stressed it’s never:
- Trained generative AI on customer content
- Taken ownership of a customer’s work
- Allowed access to customer content beyond legal requirements.
“Nor were we considering any of those practices as part of the recent Terms of Use update,” Adobe's Belsky and Rao wrote. “That said, we agree that evolving our Terms of Use to reflect our commitments to our community is the right thing to do.”
The Adobe duo also admitted the company should have modernized its Terms of Use sooner.
“As technology evolves, we must evolve the legal language that evolves our policies and practices not just in our daily operations, but also in ways that proactively narrow and explain our legal requirements in easy-to-understand language,” they wrote, adding that, as a platform that hosts content for creators, Adobe has an opportunity to “create Terms of Use that reflect the modern-day challenges that creators face.”
“Our updated Terms of Use, which we will be releasing next week,” they continued, “will be more precise, will be limited to only the activities we know we need to do now and in the immediate future, and uses more plain language and examples to help customers understand what they mean and why we have them.”
Lessons Learned for Marketers and CX Leaders
Will the updates be enough to satisfy the UX designers and creatives always ready to speak up on platforms like X? We’ll see on June 18. If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that marketers and customer experience leaders can take a couple of lessons: Be clear — super clear — when rolling out big changes for customers. And listen to customers when they have concerns. You have to give Adobe credit there for responding, and even changing its policies and practices when the large feedback swath indicated it should.
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“‘We don’t train generative AI on customer content.’ I think, this was by far the biggest concern,” product manager Denny Klisch posted on X in a response to Belsky’s June 10 X post. “I like your proactive approach as well as that you listened to users.”
And perhaps one final lesson: Not all customers will be completely satisfied: “Nobody believes you,” artist NecroKuma posted on X, also responding to Belsky June 10. “We know your company has made this move before, there is no reason to believe that things will be different now."
