I’ve been writing every week on Martech Zone since 2006. While I think of myself as a creator, every product, solution, strategy, or opinion I provide here was learned or collaborated before I published it. Of course, I repackage and focus my content in a way that I believe provides value to my readers, but I would struggle with an argument about whether or not my creations are original.
This article, for example, is the result of an email promoting Cara’s dramatic growth and my reading about Adobe license modification on X. Is this original? I suppose… but it’s still the result of content someone else created and shared online. I’m quite concerned about the rapid growth of AI and what it will do to a site like Martech Zone. And I’m concerned that my content will help train the models that might replace me. Still, I’m all in on AI and believe the benefits to humanity will far outweigh the disruption… even in my own life.
Adobe Licensing
The debate over using creators’ work to train AI art generators has reached new heights following a controversial update to Adobe’s terms of service. The software giant recently amended its licensing agreement to grant itself broad rights over content created using its tools, intensifying the heated battle between creators and tech companies investing heavily in generative AI (GenAI).
Under the updated terms, Adobe gave itself a “non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable license to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate” any content made with its software.
Adobe
The changes sparked immediate outrage among artists, many of whom were already feeling threatened by the rapid rise of AI tools capable of replicating their styles.
On the surface, this appears sinister. Practically, though, it makes sense. There’s no stopping AI-powered, assisted, or driven creation platforms. If Adobe’s AI is training on their customers’ creations, they do require the licensing to train it. That said, the verbiage in the license agreement is quite frightening. I can understand why creators see it as the latest example of Silicon Valley appropriating their work to fuel AI systems that could ultimately render their skills obsolete.
The controversy has added momentum to a growing artist backlash against generative AI. In recent months, platforms like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E 2 have made rapid strides in their ability to create striking images based on text prompts, often replicating the styles of recognizable artists. However, many creatives are incensed that these tools are trained on vast datasets scraped from the web without their consent or compensation.
Cara: An AI-Free Refuge for Creators
When Meta announced they would utilize uploaded art to train on, some artists took action by abandoning established platforms for alternative spaces like Cara, a new social media app that has positioned itself as an AI-free refuge for human artists. Cara, which bans AI-generated content, has seen explosive growth in recent weeks, with its user base surging from 40,000 to 650,000 as creatives seek out platforms that prioritize their rights and interests.
The rise of Cara and the broader artist backlash against AI point to a deepening rift between creators and the tech industry over the future of generative AI. Many artists fear that without clearer regulations and protections, algorithms trained on their own works could undermine their livelihoods.
The Adobe licensing controversy has only added fuel to this fire, crystallizing for many that their creative output is being exploited without their consent. As the debate over AI art intensifies, finding an equitable balance between technological progress and the rights of human creators is emerging as one of the defining challenges of the AI era.
For now, the battle lines are being drawn, with artists increasingly taking a stand against what they see as an existential threat to their careers. How this uprising ultimately plays out remains to be seen. Still, one thing is clear: the collision between AI ambitions and the creative community is coming to a head, and the stakes for artists have never been higher.
