Employees Slam Adobe Over Controversial AI Practices

Adobe’s internal employees have raised angry concerns over its controversial AI practices, inadequate communication strategy, and lack of vigilance.

Adobe has already been in the spotlight for angering artists due to its recent changes to terms of use. The recent policy upgrade vaguely interprets that the company can use public data to train its AI models. This means that the content created on Adobe’s AI products can be used without consent for the company’s usage. Not only artists, but internal employees have also raised their disagreement over this practice, calling it pure evil.

An internal employee was cited making a bold statement on the company’s Slack channel, "If our goal is truly to prioritize our users' best interests (which, to be honest, I sometimes question), it's astonishing how poor our communication can be. The general perception is: Adobe is an evil company that will do whatever it takes to F its users." 

"Let's avoid becoming like IBM, which seems to be surviving primarily due to its entrenched market position and legacy systems," the employee added. Employees at Adobe have urged their employer to plan better long-term communication that avoids controversies and puts the brand’s image in an extremely negative light.

Adobe’s AI Language Models extensively train using public text, images, audio, and video. Even though it is unclear how the data is recorded and shared for training purposes, but the practice has been confirmed by the internal members. Adobe, however, has denied any such practice and has also posted a public blog explaining every detail of the matter.

The vague terms of use include sentences like “May analyze your content”, meaning anything that the company deems suitable in the aspects of analysis. Public rage over the usage of a mountain of data without consent has led to threats like the cancellation of Adobe products’ subscriptions. 

Our automated systems may analyze your Content and Creative Cloud Customer Fonts (defined in section 3.10 (Creative Cloud Customer Fonts) below) using techniques such as machine learning in order to improve our Services and Software and the user experience,the blog content stated.

Adobe has accepted that it needs to access the data to perform certain unrelated functions but assured that they do not fall in training purposes. The criticism faced by Adobe not just from the artist community but also the employees as well creates a highly sceptical image of the brand. The overall impact of AI on employment has added more layers to it with the recent controversy.