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Adobe Says Artists Should Embrace AI If They Want to be Successful

Photoshop and Substance 3D developer now openly antagonizes anti-AI creators by doubling down on generative AI.

Ever since the artificial intelligence boom of 2022, Photoshop and Substance 3D developer Adobe has been in a precarious position, having to constantly balance its identity as a tech company participating in the ridiculous race to scrape more data and feed more artwork into AI systems than the competitors, while also catering to a target audience largely made up of Digital Artists, whose attitude towards AI grows increasingly negative as time goes on.

After years of shoving generative AI into every product they own, Adobe has seemingly grown tired of maintaining this balance, with its leadership now openly antagonizing anti-AI artists by claiming that if they don't adopt the detested generative technology, they won't stand a chance at success.

In an interview with The Verge, Adobe's Vice President of Generative AI, Alexandru Costin, claimed that flesh-and-blood creators are "not going to be successful in this new world" if they refuse to use generative AI. He also noted that he "isn't aware" of any upcoming Adobe tools that won't come pre-packaged with some form of artificial intelligence-related technology. In other words, if you're using Photoshop, After Effects, or Substance 3D, you will inevitably come face-to-face with AI-powered tools, whether you like it or not.

"We have older versions of our products that don't use gen AI, but I wouldn't recommend using them," commented Costin. "Our goal is to make our customers successful, and we think that in order for them to be successful, they need to embrace the tech."

David Wadhwani, the company's President of Digital Media, echoed Costin's views, stating that regardless of user opinions, Adobe believes its approach "is the one that wins frankly in the short term, but certainly in the long term." At the same time, he acknowledged that the generated slop some people call "art" these days will never be valued at the same level as works produced by human hand and creativity, saying that in the future, real creators will become more treasured.

"I think there will be a thirst for artists who do things by hand," he said. "In the last decade, I can take a picture and run it through a process that makes it look like a painting, but I'm not going to value that 'painting' the same way I would an artist who actually took the time to make a real painting."

Furthermore, Wadhwani all but confirmed that Adobe's decision to continue pushing generative AI is driven purely by profits, as he stated that the Firefly-powered generative AI features they've added to their software have become some of the most adopted products the company has ever put on the market, a situation not too dissimilar from the video game industry, where some games' revenues and player reviews don't correlate.

Frankly speaking, Adobe's decision to triple down on AI, while absolutely despicable for many Digital Artists, was seen from miles away and evident to those who witnessed the massive controversy the company faced in June.

Back then, the community lambasted the developer for changes to its General Terms of Use, which required users of Adobe products to allow the company to access and view their creations through both automated and manual methods, and even analyze their work using techniques such as machine learning.

This led many to believe that the company planned to use all user-generated content to train its AI models, and even though Adobe has since clarified that they don't intend to do that, the belief can hardly be described as unfounded, considering that the developer is now disregarding the anti-AI sentiment of many creators in order to keep biggering on its artificial thneeds.

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Comments 4

  • Anonymous user

    Allow me to translate Adobe execs:  AI always needs fresh training data, so please, artists, keep generating work we can steal.  

    3

    Anonymous user

    ·9 days ago·
  • Anonymous user

    Adobe has not been a company for artists for a long time. The AI pivot was a very transparent and natural moneygrab from the start. It's commonplace for companies run by only higherups greed and lack of ethical compass.

    Until a competent competitor with a strong enough product rises from their blunder. That can compete with products like Photoshop in the professional field. The landscape for people working in the industry looking for ethical treatment is going to be hell.

    For now, we need to hope new innovative products refuse to be bought out by adobe. And we need to wish Adobe a very happy lawsuit (current and most likely future)...which they will hopefully lose deservedly.

    1

    Anonymous user

    ·6 days ago·
  • Gilbertson Alan

    It's ironic that the attacks and disinformation are leveled against Adobe, who have done more than anyone to protect artists' ownership of their work: They have never scraped content from any sources they don't license. They pay creators who permit their work to be used as training data (very well, in fact: I saw plenty of happy posts in the Adobe Stock Discord when the second round of payments went out), and they've worked from the git-go to do the right thing in this space. So why the lopsided article and oafish comments?

    It ought to be obvious that creatives embrace new technologies or they lose ground. That's been true for at least two millennia. It was true when the sewing machine transformed fashion. It was true when precision machining made fine metal type possible. It was true when Photoshop made airbrush retouching unnecessary. It was true when PageMaker made typesetters and color separation techs obsolete. And it's true now, with AI. Like it or not, we either roll with it or get rolled over by it.

    Yes, there are people who sew by hand. There are lettering artists. A few photographic artists still use tintype and film. There are even zines made using pasteboards and gum. But these are niche specialties.

    Creatives who use AI to enhance their workflows will out-compete people who don't. If you can get five times as much done as the competition in the same workday, you're obviously going to have more opportunities to win customers. Wadhwani is just pointing out that a bloke with a steam shovel gets a lot more work done than a bloke with a regular shovel; no rocket science involved.

    None of Adobe's positive initiatives, nor the fact they have never, ever scraped user content, get any mention here, only the tabloid-style fake news. That's just wrong.

    -5

    Gilbertson Alan

    ·8 days ago·
  • Anonymous user

    Oh the people who profit off of AI want you to think you'll fail if you don't use it?

    I'm shocked....🤦‍♀️

    3

    Anonymous user

    ·9 days ago·

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