Adobe have serious issues at the mo, ever since AI was allowed. I dont upload AI but normal photo uploads now get 100% rejection for no reason (Adobe community support agree there is an issue). The sooner Adobe stop rejecting uploads 100% the better or its pointless being their contributor. The 100% rejection doesnt happen all the time but only occured since AI was allowed so from there they must of started using AI to review onagea.

Good to see Shutterstock joining the conversation!!

Don't be Shuttershocked! 

Yup review has been inconsistent as of lately, some batches get 100% rejection (and I'm a stock contributor for 15 years now and was in top 100 contributors at one point, so it's pretty strange - maybe I bumped my head against something and forgot everything I knew?), and some AI crap with floating hands passes review.

I don't know the inner workings at Adobe, but something needs to be done about that.

If you guys want to try to get some insights into why your images were rejected you can join the Adobe Stock Discord server and post up to 3 image ID's in the #rejection-reasons channel before this Sunday, September 3 at 12:00 PT. Adobe Stock will review all those images and select up to ten to talk about them and explain in detail why they were rejected by the moderators.

I'm pleased to report that my Adobe Stock account has been restored and is functioning perfectly. However, the restoration occurred without any notice, email, or message from Adobe.

While I'm relieved and grateful that my account is active again, the lack of communication is disconcerting for several reasons:

    Uncertainty: Without an explanation, I'm left wondering what caused the issue and how to prevent it in the future. (I got only the same generic reply)
    Guidance: Without feedback, I'm unsure how to proceed with my contributions. Shall I delete any assets from my library or shall I change any meta data? What was exactly the reason?

It would be great if Adobe could provide some insights into why this might have happened and how contributors can avoid similar situations in the future?

Thank you for sharing the information!

I'm still sitting here with a blocked account (for 8 days now) and somehow trying to figure out what's wrong and how long I'll probably have to wait until the account is active again - should it become active again, because I don't know that either.

The only official information I have on this so far is: "If the account becomes active again, which is not certain, unfortunately no time frame can be given for this."
So, in short, I currently don't even know if I need to look for a new second job or not....

So I can only agree with your points... this lack of information and the uncertainty that comes with it is definitely grueling.

Have a nice day@All,
Michael

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Another small addendum @Adobe:
It would be enough for us blocked accountowners, if someone told us "You will get your account back, but it will take another 2 weeks to check and remove the problem images".
Or something along those lines - just a little more information please and not leave your contributors completely unaware of their future as is currently the case.

Thank you very much!

"Do not submit generative AI content where other artists or artists have been referenced in the submission."

Not in keywords, titles, descriptions or file names. Or you will risk having your account locked. I just wanted to dig the answer out of all the posts and conjecture. There could be other reasons, but this one is clear.

I'm still searching my database of images and videos for possible copyright issues and after a very long read of many official posts in the AdobeStock Discord I came across that the filename can be a problem.... I probably wouldn't have thought of that, since the customer shouldn't actually be able to see it?!

Anyway, I used "Giger" in the filename of an image series, assuming the filename is "mine" - that was a wrong assumption it seems.
The metadata does not contain anything from "Giger", I always remove names (see picture below).

I think you discovered the problem and I'd agree, who would imagine that our file names are a liability?

You have submitted files that refer to famous artists, people, characters from popular culture, and/or other existing subjects such as video games in the image, title or keywords. We take intellectual property rights very seriously and your uploads are a violation of these rights and thus violate the upload guidelines.

I think you are making assumptions about misused keywords and filenames. I think you likely have a bigger problem with images such as these:

I think you are making assumptions about misused keywords and filenames. I think you likely have a bigger problem with images such as these

Thank you for the examples - I definatly got what you want to tell me, for sure.

But those images where in no way made with prompts to imitate something or someone and this was never my intention:

- Image series (a - the cats) :If you use german (my native language) "Eine surreale m�rrische Katze" this translates to "A surreal grumpy cat", which is exactly what my prompt was. I never intended to imitate a famous person/thing, that i didn't even know before. So there is no "in the style of" violation happening - at least the image review should have sorted this out, if it is a problem to show a "m�rrische Katze".

- Images series (b - evil clown doll): The prompt was "An evil clown doll in a dirty look", which is just what came to my mind - I think you are referring to the Chucky movie, which i haven't seen by the way. If "An evil clown doll in a dirty look" is a problem, then the review should sort this out, in my humble opinion.

Oops, just saw you didn't mean the movie Chucky, but something from 2017 - my bad, haven't seen that movie.
When making that prompf "Evil clown doll in a dirty look" I was thinking of people dressed like clowns and scared people in the streets...


To be clear: I don't want to absolve myself of blame here - I certainly made mistakes in my images and keywords, because some things were simply not known to me and at some points I was certainly not attentive enough - I don't doubt that.

I am of the opinion that one cannot know everything and mistakes happen from time to time.
These images should simply be deleted in the current situation and the problem is solved - I am also happy to remove anything questionable from my portfolio without hesitation - no problem at all.

If I get the opportunity, I will definitely not upload any even remotely questionable motif - the lesson with the account block was definitely a lesson to me!


Edit:
- Maybe you want to check the search for "A grumpy cat" -> https://stock.adobe.com/de/search?k=a+grumpy+cat&search_type=usertyped with 9k+ results
- Or try "evil clown doll" as a search on stock.adobe.com - you will find lots and lots of similar images to mine

So I would guess those two examples do not seem to be the problem/the reason for the account blocks, if we assume all accounts with the same problematic assets have been blocked.

Don't get me wrong - if those images are a problem for Adobe Stock - let us delete them right away, I am totally fine with that!

Congrats on getting unblocked so quickly. You must have aged quite a bit.

One problem is that even if you use perfectly innocent prompts, the ai might give you copyrighted material because it is drawing on popular images that people like.

And a lot of people are prompting horror clowns based on movies etc...

So it is up to us to recognize if the result is problematic.

If in doubt, kick it out.

Thank you Mat and Adobe for not keeping the people writing here waiting for two months in the most important buying season.

But the conversation here was very helpful, I removed several images that I would not have considered as problematic before and will be much more careful going forward.

I don't really understand why Adobe would block an account for this. Why not simply reject the images? Seems a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on August 31, 2023, 11:40

Quote from: JustAnImage on August 27, 2023, 15:41

I'm still searching my database of images and videos for possible copyright issues and after a very long read of many official posts in the AdobeStock Discord I came across that the filename can be a problem.... I probably wouldn't have thought of that, since the customer shouldn't actually be able to see it?!

Anyway, I used "Giger" in the filename of an image series, assuming the filename is "mine" - that was a wrong assumption it seems.
The metadata does not contain anything from "Giger", I always remove names (see picture below).

I think you discovered the problem and I'd agree, who would imagine that our file names are a liability?

Thank you - Yes, I never expected that to be a criterion.

Because let's say a file is called "beach in the style of ABC" that's exactly what's in it - so for example I named my files "in Wrendale style" (not in titles or keywords) because "in a watercolor painting style" was too long for me.
To make the assumption that you have copied a style here is a very dubious assumption at best.

In the future (assuming I get my account back) I will use a filename scrambler, a script that makes the filenames unreadable before uploading.

But as I noted above, I did indeed miss a keyword in a series of images when removing the automatically generated keywords, so I'm doing my part to be in this situation.

Now I have to be patient, because I'm sure I've already annoyed Mat and the other Adobe employees from the AS Discord enough with my questions - but I'm sticking to it:

The people with blocked accounts urgently need information on
(a) whether they can get the account back
and
(b) by when this will happen.

YUP!    I feel warned just in case. I could make the same mistake.

Just to keep you all up to date:

My account (which was blocked for 8 days) was reactivated late last Thursday evening - 19 images were removed that contained an illegal term/trademark - Thanks again for helping me out here @Mat/Adobe.

Since the account has been reactivated, I have noticed a massive drop in downloads - from an average of 23 per working day (yes, that's not soooo many for some of you) to now 8 per working day on average, a drop of about 35%.

Almost all my images that were doing well before the account are now not selling at all - only one image from my Top20 list had two sales today.

The question I'm asking myself now is: Will the account block also expose you to further mechanisms afterwards that will throw you completely back to the end of the queue (or close to it) in the ranking?
Because before the 8-day block, the account was doing increasingly better.

In the AdobeStock Discord I unfortunately only received this very general sentence as an answer to this question:
"Sales are determined by what the buyers are looking for. It's possible that the recent slump was just a temporary one and sales will pick up again based on the changing needs and preferences of the buyers."

That sucks. Hopefully your sales stabilize.

I'm surprised by your average # of sales per day.. your portfolio seems to have more than 100 pages, and most of the content looks like AI (I haven't checked in detail - please correct me if I'm wrong). 23 downloads per day for a port of at least 10k images seems rather low.

Also, a drop from 23 to 8 isn't 35%, it's a 65% drop. Maybe you meant to say your sales are 35% of previous sales (not a 35% drop).

...
Please let us know when it goes back up.
This week there was a long week-end holiday in the US, my sales have also slowed down.

Of course I will keep you informed - maybe sales will come in soon again, we'll see
What is interesting are the existing sales, which refer almost exclusively to pictures that were already online before but did not produce any sales.

The tip about the long holiday in the US was also kindly given to me in Discord.

And let's face it - we've all been trying to figure out how "the algorithm" works for years...

Edit: As a mathematician, I am of course always looking for patterns here, but presumably "the algorithm" goes far beyond my horizon ;-)

Have a good night,
Michael