Only Google doesn’t charge you an arm and a leg subscription pricing.
What the heck?
Actually Google allows Opt-Out, and in most cases that's the default. A user has to actively Opt-In to data sharing. They've also improved on their general data privacy with map location tracking and history now stored on personal devices rather than at Google, and which follows their 2 years earlier decision to no longer use Gmail contents for key-wording or other advertisement purposes.
Since iOS10 you've given Apple permission to collect some of your data for training ML/AI, "anonymized" of course, though you probably weren't aware of it being disclosed in the ToS you agree to. Nobody reads'em.
Some data sharing on your iDevices like Apple TV was once automatically opt-in, and users had to be aware of a setting to Opt out. I think they've corrected that misjudgment now, but you know who doesn't get it?
We’re updating our Privacy Policy as we expand AI at Meta
Hi (fill in your name)
We’re getting ready to expand our AI at Meta experiences to your region. AI at Meta is our collection of generative AI features and experiences, such as Meta AI and AI creative tools, along with the models that power them.
What this means for you
To help bring these experiences to you, we’ll now rely on the legal basis called legitimate interests for using your information to develop and improve AI at Meta. This means that you have the right to object to how your information is used for these purposes. If your objection is honoured, it will be applied from then on.
We’re including updates in our Privacy Policy to reflect these changes. The updates come into effect on 26 June 2024.
Thanks, The Meta Privacy team
With Google, it’s the TOS and privacy policy. Otherwise you can’t use their wares.
Some of our services are designed to let you upload, submit, store, send, receive, or share your content. You have no obligation to provide any content to our services and you’re free to choose the content that you want to provide. If you choose to upload or share content, please make sure you have the necessary rights to do so and that the content is lawful.”
They state prior that YOU cannot use other people’s work. But THEY (Google) can use yours.
Of note, as relates to AI usage of your creative works:
Google isn’t liable for:
loss of profits, revenues, business opportunities, goodwill, or anticipated savings
indirect or consequential losses
punitive damages
The verbiage in “permission to use your content” is very broad brush. And the verbiage “sharing your content with our services” is basically “you e chosen to share your content with Google” who can then do as they wish.
It’s astounding that anyone who has a care in the world uses these services.
Some of our services are designed to let you upload, submit, store, send, receive, or share your content. You have no obligation to provide any content to our services and you’re free to choose the content that you want to provide. If you choose to upload or share content, please make sure you have the necessary rights to do so and that the content is lawful.”
They state prior that YOU cannot use other people’s work. But THEY (Google) can use yours.
Of note, as relates to AI usage of your creative works:
Google isn’t liable for:
loss of profits, revenues, business opportunities, goodwill, or anticipated savings
indirect or consequential losses
punitive damages
The verbiage in “permission to use your content” is very broad brush. And the verbiage “sharing your content with our services” is basically “you e chosen to share your content with Google” who can then do as they wish.
It’s astounding that anyone who has a care in the world uses these services.
I see you reaching for any hint of Google doing something devious with your content, and no way to avoid it, but based on what you've come up with I'm not seeing it.
Except to the extent prohibited by law, you hereby grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nonexclusive license to use the materials you submit within the Services and related marketing as well as to use the materials you submit for Apple internal purposes. Apple may monitor and decide to remove or edit any submitted material, including via automated content filters and/or human review...
and
...you grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available, without any compensation or obligation to you.
By accepting the ToS Apple also collects and uses "Data about your activity on and use of our offerings, such as app launches within our services, including browsing history; search history; product interaction; crash data, performance and other diagnostic data; and other usage data" and "For research and development purposes, we may use datasets such as those that contain images, voices, or other data that could be associated with an identifiable person"
Of note, as long as data is aggregated the privacy policy does not apply. So since you have your "Trust no one" hat on, does any of that indicate Apple doing something devious with your data?
With Google, it’s the TOS and privacy policy. Otherwise you can’t use their wares.
Well of course you can't.
You own an iPhone. Can you use it without accepting Apple's Terms of Service? How about a Mac. Can you use it without agreeing to Apple's ToS. AppStore? Yup, ToS agreement or no go.
At some point some lawyers are going to blow up the whole click-to-agree practice. It wouldn’t be hard to demonstrate that the vast majority of times agreements are clicked the user has not read them and the vendor knows the agreements have not been read. It has essentially become a fraudulent practice. It simply cannot be claimed that this practice involves informed consent. In many cases it also could not be unequivocally proven that a specific person is the one who clicked to agree.
As an aside, I once purchased an unfamiliar brand WiFi-enabled device that required an app to operate. The device arrived and I went to the App Store for the app, and because I was unfamiliar with the manufacturer, clicked through to read the user and privacy agreements before even downloading the app. Turns out the user agreement would require abiding by provisions of the Chinese constitution, including various “decency” and conduct standards, including not saying anything to criticize the Chinese government. I did not download the app, and I did return the device unused.
Honestly... and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here... this feels like criminal extortion. Many creative professionals earn their living--or run their whole business--on Adobe. There isn't really an option to just stop on a dime when you're all in on Adobe. So this is Adobe using that leverage to extort its user base into agreeing to its egregious and outrageous new and novel demands for continued use of its products. In effect, Adobe made its user base an offer they couldn't refuse. This needs to go to court asap, and also speaks to the much greater problem of out-of-control terms buried in dense, book-length legalese in technology user agreements. Its like owners of new GM cars getting blindsided by skyrocketing auto insurance rates because their cars--thanks to what they signed in all the paperwork at the time of purchase--were busy collecting detailed data on how they drove, then transmitted it to GM, which then sold that data to insurers who jacked up their rates.
First, a reminder that "the cloud" does not exist, it's just putting your stuff on somebody else's computer.
Second, a reminder that Little Snitch exists, and should always be used with all Adobe products, pirated or otherwise.
That's technically not valid.
The cloud refers to infrastructure on the internet that is partially or wholly distributed globally. Any service that offers automatic replication across multiple data centers is a "cloud" service. This is very common, and forms the backbone of redundancy and resiliency.
You can be assured that Adobe's apps are not on "some computer". They are replicated broadly.
Regarding Little Snitch, fair point, but doesn't really have anything to do with his article, or offer any protection against a license that a user has voluntarily agreed to.
Some of our services are designed to let you upload, submit, store, send, receive, or share your content. You have no obligation to provide any content to our services and you’re free to choose the content that you want to provide. If you choose to upload or share content, please make sure you have the necessary rights to do so and that the content is lawful.”
They state prior that YOU cannot use other people’s work. But THEY (Google) can use yours.
Of note, as relates to AI usage of your creative works:
Google isn’t liable for:
loss of profits, revenues, business opportunities, goodwill, or anticipated savings
indirect or consequential losses
punitive damages
The verbiage in “permission to use your content” is very broad brush. And the verbiage “sharing your content with our services” is basically “you e chosen to share your content with Google” who can then do as they wish.
It’s astounding that anyone who has a care in the world uses these services.
I see you reaching for any hint of Google doing something devious with your content, and no way to avoid it, but based on what you've come up with I'm not seeing it.
Except to the extent prohibited by law, you hereby grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nonexclusive license to use the materials you submit within the Services and related marketing as well as to use the materials you submit for Apple internal purposes. Apple may monitor and decide to remove or edit any submitted material, including via automated content filters and/or human review...
and
...you grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available, without any compensation or obligation to you.
By accepting the ToS Apple also collects and uses "Data about your activity on and use of our offerings, such as app launches within our services, including browsing history; search history; product interaction; crash data, performance and other diagnostic data; and other usage data" and "For research and development purposes, we may use datasets such as those that contain images, voices, or other data that could be associated with an identifiable person"
Of note, as long as data is aggregated the privacy policy does not apply. So since you have your "Trust no one" hat on, does any of that indicate Apple doing something devious with your data?
You don’t see it because you choose not to. Such is your history here. It’s ok your prerogative. Carry on.
Honestly... and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here... this feels like criminal extortion. Many creative professionals earn their living--or run their whole business--on Adobe. There isn't really an option to just stop on a dime when you're all in on Adobe. So this is Adobe using that leverage to extort its user base into agreeing to its egregious and outrageous new and novel demands for continued use of its products. In effect, Adobe made its user base an offer they couldn't refuse. This needs to go to court asap, and also speaks to the much greater problem of out-of-control terms buried in dense, book-length legalese in technology user agreements. Its like owners of new GM cars getting blindsided by skyrocketing auto insurance rates because their cars--thanks to what they signed in all the paperwork at the time of purchase--were busy collecting detailed data on how they drove, then transmitted it to GM, which then sold that data to insurers who jacked up their rates.
Agreed. Wouldn’t be surprised to see a class action. And I’d be on board. There must be an opt out - or it definitely reeks of extortion. Existing customers who spent money to be trained to use adobes industry standard tools and spent years mastering them and become beholden to them as tools of the trade - only to be forced into giving their work away for the benefit of Adobe and in turn other customers - and competitors alike (through the use of generative ai “trained” on their works. You’d think this was China or Russia or some banana republic tactic. But nope. It’s Adobe. They have to know a lawsuit is coming, but they’ll scrape what they can in the meantime.
Honestly... and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic here... this feels like criminal extortion. Many creative professionals earn their living--or run their whole business--on Adobe. There isn't really an option to just stop on a dime when you're all in on Adobe. So this is Adobe using that leverage to extort its user base into agreeing to its egregious and outrageous new and novel demands for continued use of its products. In effect, Adobe made its user base an offer they couldn't refuse. This needs to go to court asap, and also speaks to the much greater problem of out-of-control terms buried in dense, book-length legalese in technology user agreements. Its like owners of new GM cars getting blindsided by skyrocketing auto insurance rates because their cars--thanks to what they signed in all the paperwork at the time of purchase--were busy collecting detailed data on how they drove, then transmitted it to GM, which then sold that data to insurers who jacked up their rates.
Agreed. Wouldn’t be surprised to see a class action. And I’d be on board. There must be an opt out - or it definitely reeks of extortion.
So much handwringing, misunderstanding, and jumping to conclusions. Typical responses to web headlines. Few people bother to look beyond the first sentence and figure things out for themselves, but it's Adobe's fault for not explaining it better in the first place. From a consumer standpoint, it also should be opt-in and not opt-out ,but I get why that would be ineffective.
None of that would have prevented tin-foil hats being passed around, but there would have been far fewer.
Trust but verify no longer exists. It's now trust no one, and it's beginning to reflect on Apple and other traditionally trustworthy companies too.
It's not yet clear if they are taking our content and using it for their own AI training purposes or just poorly explaining that they need the permissions to do what users request of their AI. Since there is no "Opt-Out," as I presume the EU would require if they were accessing your private data, I suspect it's the latter.
Adobe needs to explain things far better, and soon. Now if you were talking about Meta instead, yeah they really are claiming ownership of your Facebook interactions for training their LLM models.
The terms are vague enough so that they can claim we accepted the usage.
Apple made essentially the same changes to their ToS on March 31st this year, but they've buried it in a lengthy explanation of terms and rights.
"Except to the extent prohibited by law, you hereby grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nonexclusive license to use the materials you submit within the Services and related marketingas well as to use the materials you submit for Apple internal purposes , Apple may monitor and decide to remove or edit any submitted material, including via automated content filters and/or human review."
It seems as though Apple is announcing a claim of rights to use your submitted content in Apple Photos. Apple Mail, "other Apple service", for unspecified internal Apple projects including for AI training doesn't it?
And this is a ToS you can't opt out of, unlike Adobe.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'll write to them about how now I have to plan an exodus and it's an incredible pain, so I'm going to try to post about this elsewhere.
It's not yet clear if they are taking our content and using it for their own AI training purposes or just poorly explaining that they need the permissions to do what users request of their AI. Since there is no "Opt-Out," as I presume the EU would require if they were accessing your private data, I suspect it's the latter.
Adobe needs to explain things far better, and soon. Now if you were talking about Meta instead, yeah they really are claiming ownership of your Facebook interactions for training their LLM models.
The terms are vague enough so that they can claim we accepted the usage.
Not if they make a public proclamation they won't be using our content for their own purposes, and better explain the reasons for the ToS change. That in itself would be enough for lawyers and regulators to be on notice for any hint they're not being completely honest.
Yes, but I read it, and as is, it’s vague enough. Since then they’ve made a statement, but I’m away and haven’t had time to look into it any further.
Adobe users... how much more are you going to put up with? Or are you going to wait for Adobe to declare all your physical storage belongs to them also? Stockholm Syndrome isn't a fear of large Swedish cities...
The problem is that for higher end professional users, despite what some like to say about other software, there are no truly comparable substitutes. That’s why moves like this are a problem. If other siftware companies making photo editing apps did this, it would be easier to leave.
Does it still work to upgrade a tier of creative suite and then cancel within 14 days? You know, since you are now on a «new product» they have to accept that you want to cancel said product, due to consumer law.
I used this to get out from paying a whole year, when I was led to believe I could pay month-by-month… But they demanded I pay the entire year when I didnt need it after three months, and this was not exactly clear anywhere I could read prior.
Anyways, good riddance adobe. Never touching you again with a ten foot pole, thats for sure. Not even if the project would benefit from it, not dealing w them.
Comments
and the usual suspects aren’t any better.
“Permission to use your content
Some of our services are designed to let you upload, submit, store, send, receive, or share your content. You have no obligation to provide any content to our services and you’re free to choose the content that you want to provide. If you choose to upload or share content, please make sure you have the necessary rights to do so and that the content is lawful.”
They state prior that YOU cannot use other people’s work. But THEY (Google) can use yours.
Of note, as relates to AI usage of your creative works:
Except to the extent prohibited by law, you hereby grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nonexclusive license to use the materials you submit within the Services and related marketing as well as to use the materials you submit for Apple internal purposes. Apple may monitor and decide to remove or edit any submitted material, including via automated content filters and/or human review...
and
...you grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available, without any compensation or obligation to you.
By accepting the ToS Apple also collects and uses "Data about your activity on and use of our offerings, such as app launches within our services, including browsing history; search history; product interaction; crash data, performance and other diagnostic data; and other usage data" and "For research and development purposes, we may use datasets such as those that contain images, voices, or other data that could be associated with an identifiable person"
Of note, as long as data is aggregated the privacy policy does not apply.
So since you have your "Trust no one" hat on, does any of that indicate Apple doing something devious with your data?
You own an iPhone. Can you use it without accepting Apple's Terms of Service? How about a Mac. Can you use it without agreeing to Apple's ToS. AppStore? Yup, ToS agreement or no go.
That's technically not valid.
The cloud refers to infrastructure on the internet that is partially or wholly distributed globally. Any service that offers automatic replication across multiple data centers is a "cloud" service. This is very common, and forms the backbone of redundancy and resiliency.
You can be assured that Adobe's apps are not on "some computer". They are replicated broadly.
Regarding Little Snitch, fair point, but doesn't really have anything to do with his article, or offer any protection against a license that a user has voluntarily agreed to.
https://helpx.adobe.com/manage-account/using/machine-learning-faq.html#:~:text
And don't miss reading the first paragraph.
So much handwringing, misunderstanding, and jumping to conclusions. Typical responses to web headlines. Few people bother to look beyond the first sentence and figure things out for themselves, but it's Adobe's fault for not explaining it better in the first place. From a consumer standpoint, it also should be opt-in and not opt-out ,but I get why that would be ineffective.
None of that would have prevented tin-foil hats being passed around, but there would have been far fewer.
Trust but verify no longer exists. It's now trust no one, and it's beginning to reflect on Apple and other traditionally trustworthy companies too.
"Except to the extent prohibited by law, you hereby grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nonexclusive license to use the materials you submit within the Services and related marketing as well as to use the materials you submit for Apple internal purposes , Apple may monitor and decide to remove or edit any submitted material, including via automated content filters and/or human review."
It seems as though Apple is announcing a claim of rights to use your submitted content in Apple Photos. Apple Mail, "other Apple service", for unspecified internal Apple projects including for AI training doesn't it?
And this is a ToS you can't opt out of, unlike Adobe.
The problem is that for higher end professional users, despite what some like to say about other software, there are no truly comparable substitutes. That’s why moves like this are a problem. If other siftware companies making photo editing apps did this, it would be easier to leave.
You do those with Adobe products?
I used this to get out from paying a whole year, when I was led to believe I could pay month-by-month… But they demanded I pay the entire year when I didnt need it after three months, and this was not exactly clear anywhere I could read prior.
Anyways, good riddance adobe. Never touching you again with a ten foot pole, thats for sure. Not even if the project would benefit from it, not dealing w them.