After Adobe announced changes to its terms of use this week, saying that the company “may access your content through both automated and manual methods, such as for content review. and also announcing that Adobe might analyze user content using machine learning (including using data to train AI, there was a backlash from users that resonated not just in Europe but transferred over the mainland USA.
Dystopian visions of Big Brother Adobe watching every time you use or edit an image sparked fears of client confidentiality breaches, with statements online like” “If you are a professional, if you are under NDA with your clients, (whether you’re a creative, a lawyer, a doctor or anyone who works with proprietary files), these terms mean that it is time to cancel Adobe, delete all the apps and programs, or you may end up being sued by your own cleints for breach of the NDA”. …“Adobe cannot now be trusted.” The initial revised terms affect over 20 million global users including anyone using Adobe’s Creative Cloud Suite.
The move has fuelled a focus on use of data for AI training that are hidden within terms and conditions in many AI companies and speculation that AI companies could face a ruling from European regulators that consimers had inadequate eunderstanding of the terms of conditions such that the consent obtained was not valud and therefore that users are entitled to compensation for use of their data, with compensation claims dwarfing the claims by the music industry and hollywood against AI companies and with EU regulators imposing turnover based fines which would be “very very significant”.
The Adobe terms (s4.2) purport to give Adobe a royalty-free and sublicensable license to “use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, translate” its users’ creations…” something that many people believe allows Adobe to use their data (and their client’s data used in Adobe) to train Firefly, the company’s generative AI model, or to access sensitive projects that might be under NDA via use of Adobe platforms.
Adobe published a clarification stating “Our commitments to our customers have not changed, but Adobe’s chief product officer, Scott Belsky, was forced to agree that the wording within the notification is “unclear”.
Austrian privacy advocates at The European Center for Digital Rights [known as None Of Your Business (NOYB)] has lodged complaints against Meta in 11 European countries alleging that Meta is seeking to use its platform users’ personal data to train artificial intelligence models following Meta’s updated privacy policy allowing it to use all public and non-public user data, with the exception of chats between individuals, that it has collected since 2007 for “current and future artificial intelligence technology”.
Meta stated last week that it would begin notifying UK and EU users how it will use “public information they have shared on Meta’s products and services to develop and improve AI at Meta within their respective privacy laws”., proompting NOYB to request an “urgency procedure” under the EU’s data protection rules as Meta’s policy will take effect on 26 June. NOYB say that complainants for other EU countries and against other AI entities are following in the next few weeks and Meta have been forced to delay the launch in Ireland following threats from the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) . Meta’s LLM Llama3 and its assistant Meta AI, are not widely available in Europe, although many users in the EU are using it via VPNs.
Meta’s Facebook and Instagram are already subject to two investigations by the European commission under the Digital Services Act (DSA) as the EC considers that measures to protect minors online may not be compliant with the platform rules.