Adobe's new generative AI service has "ethical standards"

On Monday, October 14, 2024, Adobe launched a public beta for Firefly, the company's new generative AI service, which can be used to generate text-to-video prompts, enhance and expand backgrounds in Photoshop, and more. So far, so standard fare for generative AI software.

What makes Firefly stand out is that Adobe has shared some actual ethical standards for how the AI service is being trained and used.

The current Firefly generative AI models were trained on a dataset of licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content where copyright has expired. To ensure that creators can benefit from generative AI, we've developed a compensation model for Adobe Stock contributors whose content is used in the dataset to retrain Firefly models.

[…]

We train our Firefly models solely on data we have the rights to use. Our first models were trained on unique datasets comprised of Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content and content in the public domain for which the copyright has expired.

We also provide our customers with the ability to train their own Custom Models so they can easily generate content with their own styles, subjects and/or brand language.Adobe website

To its credit, the company has also published some actual details on the Adobe Stock contributor compensation system, too. The product's FAQ also makes it clear that any content generated with Firefly will not itself then be automatically submitted to the machine learning database—which is to say, that any AI-generated images or software will not be automatically opted-in for use as unlicensed AI training.

Any content generated with Firefly will also be embedded with Adobe's new Content Credentials metadata—which is to say that, it will be (or at least, is supposed to be) automatically tagged as AI-generated content. Here's how the company explains it:

Content Credentials function as a digital "nutrition label" that can show important information about how and when content was created and modified, including whether and how AI was used. Adobe automatically attaches Content Credentials to images created in Firefly to show that they were AI generated. This level of transparency gives creators a way to authenticate their content and helps consumers make informed decisions about content they see online.

On the surface, this might be the least-worst way I've seen so far of a company proceeding with generative AI tools. Of course, this is also coming from a software company that has shifted its entire business model to require uses to rent but never own their products, forcing you to pay a monthly fee in perpetuity even if you had previously purchased an outright ownership license. So we'll see how it goes, I guess.

Previously:
• U.S. sues Adobe over shady subscription plans and hidden fees