Quote from: Kenneth_17 on September 15, 2023, 02:03

What I still don't fully understand is the following. Adobe is marketing Firefly as the safe option to avoid copyright hassles. They even guarantee invincibility. But how does a buyer know on Adobe Stock that they are purchasing an image generated by Firefly and not an image created by, for example, Midjourney?

Will there be a separate category for images created by Firefly? Because if that's the case, the sales of the approximately 15 million GenAI images currently in the database (which are not created by Firefly) may dwindle. Because why would a buyer purchase those, if Adobe implicitly suggests there may be some risk associated with them?

Because Adobe has been promoting Firefly as an "ethical" AI, I was quite surprised when I discovered that Adobe has trained Firefly on other "non-ethical" AI images. So I asked about this on the Discord server and got this response from an Adobe staff member: "Adobe accepts Generative AI images on Stock, and Generative AI images from the Adobe Stock collection are a small part of the Firefly training dataset. Contributors who submit these images must agree to our Contributor Additional Terms of Use, which include the representation that the contributor has the necessary rights to the images, that the images comply with all of the terms, and that these images will meet our guidelines around the use of generative AI tools. . All Stock images come with a representation that they do not infringe the IP of others and generative images are received the same way. If content is provided that violates those representations, we take that content down upon notice."

Haha, but some of those images clearly violate intellectual property (IP) rights. There are quite a number of AI-generated images featuring a certain fruit logo on the back of laptops, for instance, in the existing database. Adobe certainly places a lot of trust in their contributors. So now, the database will contain a mixture of 'ethical' AI-generated images and non-ethical ones (because they were not generated with Firefly). However, since Firefly is also trained with 'non-ethical' AI-generated images, the database is somewhat contaminated from the start, isn't it?

I think they are clear in their policy, but they have repeatedly said, they would revisit the issue when firefly is available for commercial use.

At some point I am sure they will accept firefly ai content.

Photoshop sets the standards, a year from now nobody will understand why a normal photoshop tool is not allowed.

getty/alamy/envato are also part of the bria project

https://bria.ai/

Maybe they are waiting until their own ai project is truly usable to generate ai content and will allow both that tool and firefly at the same time.

eta

I registered and tried it. Seems to be a variant of dalle with more than square format and slightly better quality.

Not very impressed and I don�t think with that level of quality it is suitable for commercial use. Firefly is a lot better.
 

Matt, when accepting the terms of use of the Firefly plug-in in Photoshop, a message appears that commercial use of the beta version is prohibited. Does this mean that the Photoshop plug-in is still in beta or is it safe to upload files to Adobe Stock?

Quote from: matelusz on September 16, 2023, 04:28

Matt, when accepting the terms of use of the Firefly plug-in in Photoshop, a message appears that commercial use of the beta version is prohibited. Does this mean that the Photoshop plug-in is still in beta or is it safe to upload files to Adobe Stock?

Firefly is out of beta. You can use it for commercial purposes. Update your main Photoshop on your computer through the Creative Cloud and you should be good to go.

-Mat

the confusion is what commercial means - we can use the images almost anywhere but can't submit these 'commercial' images to Adobe while we can submit all our other images, including ai generated

Firefly 2 (beta) is now like a brain that's three times larger!!

"Alexandru Costin, Adobe�s VP for generative AI and Sensei, told me that the new model wasn�t just trained on more recent images from Adobe Stock and other commercially safe sources, but also that it is significantly larger. �Firefly is an ensemble of multiple models and I think we�ve increased their sizes by a factor of three,� he told me. �So it�s like a brain that�s three times larger and that will know how to make these connections and render more beautiful pixels, more beautiful details for the user.� The company also increased the dataset by almost a factor of two, which in turn should give the model a better understanding of what users are asking for."

https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/10/adobe-firefly-can-now-generate-more-realistic-images/

I didn't do much testing, but with what I did with photos, I can't really see any improvement - and it's not ready for prime time use, IMO. I did not try the match feature - where you upload your own photo to match the style. I'd want to look very carefully at what rights I'm giving Adobe over anything I upload.

I had already decided I need to avoid the generative tools in Photoshop 25 if I want to submit work to stock agencies, but the warning popup in Firefly 2 pointed me at terms and conditions that made it clear no contributor can use these tools if they upload to any agency that trains AI on their own collections.

https://www.adobe.com/legal/licenses-terms/adobe-gen-ai-user-guidelines.html

1. No AI/ML Training
 
When using our generative AI features, you agree you will use them only for your creative work product and not to train AI/ML models.

This means you must not, and must not allow third parties to, use any content, data, output or other information received or derived from any generative AI features, including any Firefly outputs, to directly or indirectly create, train, test, or otherwise improve any machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence systems, including any architectures, models, or weights.


Later on it mentions that they might introduce some beta features that wouldn't be OK for commercial use in any context but is very vague about how you're supposed to know (emphasis mine):

"However, if Adobe designates in the product or elsewhere that a beta version of a generative AI feature cannot be used commercially..."

https://www.engadget.com/adobes-next-gen-firefly-2-offers-vector-graphics-more-control-and-photorealistic-renders-160030349.html
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2100888/photoshops-ai-powers-land-on-chromebooks-as-adobe-debuts-firefly-2.html

This describes the illustrator genAI features (beta):
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/10/23911114/adobe-max-firefly-generative-ai-model-photoshop-illustrator-express

There's something here about Adobe's approach to safety and content credentials:
https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2023/10/10/adobe-firefly-new-features

The stored thumbnail of a reference image used in genAI will supposedly be used to deal with claims that an inappropriate image was used (and not for training Firefly)

https://www.pcmag.com/news/adobe-unveils-firefly-image-2-ai-at-max-conference
https://9to5mac.com/2023/10/10/adobe-firefly-ai-model-updates/

https://www.zdnet.com/article/adobe-unveils-three-new-generative-ai-models-including-the-next-generation-of-its-firefly-text-to-image-generator/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johanmoreno/2023/10/10/adobes-all-in-on-ai-debuts-new-firefly-ai-models-for-creatives/

https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/adobe-firefly-generative-ai-offerings/

https://www.fastcompany.com/90964791/adobe-ai-is-coming-for-your-branding

"Adobe also made improvements to its image generation engine, which is trained on its own stock image library. While the model allows Adobe to avoid messy copyright issues faced by other text-to-image generators trained more broadly, the downside is images look like stock photos. Under the Firefly Image 2 Model, though, generative images look less stock-like thanks to additional inputs including human feedback and the company�s �own private data set,� Costin says."

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/10/adobes-ai-image-generators-get-beefy-updates-including-vector-graphics/

"While Adobe claims that the Firefly Vector Model is "the world�s first generative AI model for vector graphics," a quick Google search disproves this claim, showing earlier vector-based AI models that range from commercial offerings to older experimental research. However, it's safe to say that this is the first vector-generating AI model from a company that is currently considered a major player in the image synthesis space."

Firefly 2 (beta) is now like a brain that's three times larger!!

"Alexandru Costin, Adobe�s VP for generative AI and Sensei, told me that the new model wasn�t just trained on more recent images from Adobe Stock and other commercially safe sources, but also that it is significantly larger. �Firefly is an ensemble of multiple models and I think we�ve increased their sizes by a factor of three,� he told me. �So it�s like a brain that�s three times larger and that will know how to make these connections and render more beautiful pixels, more beautiful details for the user.� The company also increased the dataset by almost a factor of two, which in turn should give the model a better understanding of what users are asking for."

https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/10/adobe-firefly-can-now-generate-more-realistic-images/

I didn't do much testing, but with what I did with photos, I can't really see any improvement - and it's not ready for prime time use, IMO. I did not try the match feature - where you upload your own photo to match the style. I'd want to look very carefully at what rights I'm giving Adobe over anything I upload.

I had already decided I need to avoid the generative tools in Photoshop 25 if I want to submit work to stock agencies, but the warning popup in Firefly 2 pointed me at terms and conditions that made it clear no contributor can use these tools if they upload to any agency that trains AI on their own collections.

https://www.adobe.com/legal/licenses-terms/adobe-gen-ai-user-guidelines.html

1. No AI/ML Training
 
When using our generative AI features, you agree you will use them only for your creative work product and not to train AI/ML models.

This means you must not, and must not allow third parties to, use any content, data, output or other information received or derived from any generative AI features, including any Firefly outputs, to directly or indirectly create, train, test, or otherwise improve any machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence systems, including any architectures, models, or weights.


"

This might be a significant limitation in the ability to use Firefly content for commercial purposes (on other stock sites), and one that Adobe should probably highlight more prominently, in my opinion. Or at least clarify what exactly they mean by it. I've tried my best to read Dreamstime's TOS, but I couldn't find anything resembling AI training. However, who knows what they might do in the near future? What if they change their policies (and update the TOS) and my Firefly-created content is already there? Or what if it stays the same, but the images are scraped by Midjourney to train their model? There's not much I can do about that, right?

In many places (here on the forum, in the Discord channel, on Adobe's own forum), there's a lot of questions about whether you can sell Firefly content. The answer is (in short), "yes, now that it's out of beta, you can, as long as you follow the guidelines." But these guidelines are so strict, especially due to this limitation, that you're almost only "safe" if you sell Firefly content on Adobe Stock. And the review times on Adobe Stock are so long that you don't even need to upload your Halloween or Christmas content by now because you're already too late by then.

And, ironically, the long review times are mainly caused by the flood of AI content that isn't created with Firefly (and therefore, according to Adobe at least, by less "ethical" generators than Firefly, ahem Midjourney, etc.).

1. No AI/ML Training
 
When using our generative AI features, you agree you will use them only for your creative work product and not to train AI/ML models.

This means you must not, and must not allow third parties to, use any content, data, output or other information received or derived from any generative AI features, including any Firefly outputs, to directly or indirectly create, train, test, or otherwise improve any machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence systems, including any architectures, models, or weights.


Later on it mentions that they might introduce some beta features that wouldn't be OK for commercial use in any context but is very vague about how you're supposed to know (emphasis mine):

Thanks for calling this out, Jo Ann. I want to confirm and clarify that you can upload Firefly outputs to Adobe Stock without violating Adobe's generative AI guidelines. The guidelines you quoted are meant to prohibit users from using Firefly outputs for personal or 3rd party AI/ML models.

Regarding your last point about future beta features, you can be confident that if something comes up down the road, I will be here to help explain as best I can.

Thanks again,

Mat Hayward

I don't know if Dreamstime has said that it will train on its collection, but Getty/iStock have.

I think I can continue to use Photoshop 25.x but will need to stay away from using generative fill to stay within Getty/iStock's rules (weakly enforced at the moment, but...) about not uploading AI content.

I think I might be violating Adobe's rules about training on output from Photoshop's genAI features if I decided to risk it. Getty would be a third party training on content produced with Adobe's features.

As I intend to produce one version of anything I plan to upload to multiple agencies, the only option is to avoid using generative fill & friends. Firefly would get quality rejections so it's not an issue.

This is madness! Forget about stock for a second, what if we take regular photos for our commercial clients, that we touch up using Photoshop (for instance by using the Generative Fill or Generative Expand tools). What if at some point our clients decide to use those images to train their own AI/ML. How on earth are we to prevent this? Or even know about it? We definitely need an answer from Mat regarding this topic

OK,today I generated hundreds of images with Firefly,then I check them one by one,I will choose only the best ones,and then I have to process them and fix.

Firefly made a good impression on me,but there is still a lot to improve of course,for some types of content the generations are simple and I can get the desired result in a single prompt,for other images it takes many attempts,for others I wasn't successful to create what I wanted.

I see that Firefly is progressing,improving quickly,however I noticed that it still has several difficulties and limitations,for example it is not able to create realistic reflections in water in most cases,it has difficulty with generations,such as ship's mast or soccer nets,soccer field demarcation lines,arms and hands and much more.

For the moment,it is still very difficult to generate an image in which nothing needs to be corrected,however,at the rate at which it is progressing,I am quite sure that in a year at most the image generation in Firefly will have achieved almost perfect results.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on October 10, 2023, 13:11

1. No AI/ML Training
 
When using our generative AI features, you agree you will use them only for your creative work product and not to train AI/ML models.

This means you must not, and must not allow third parties to, use any content, data, output or other information received or derived from any generative AI features, including any Firefly outputs, to directly or indirectly create, train, test, or otherwise improve any machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence systems, including any architectures, models, or weights.



Later on it mentions that they might introduce some beta features that wouldn't be OK for commercial use in any context but is very vague about how you're supposed to know (emphasis mine):

Thanks for calling this out, Jo Ann. I want to confirm and clarify that you can upload Firefly outputs to Adobe Stock without violating Adobe's generative AI guidelines. The guidelines you quoted are meant to prohibit users from using Firefly outputs for personal or 3rd party AI/ML models.

Regarding your last point about future beta features, you can be confident that if something comes up down the road, I will be here to help explain as best I can.

Thanks again,

Mat Hayward

@Mat, I am a bit confused. Does this also apply to Firefly 2? Because that's in beta and I thought that whatever is in beta can't be used commercially so uploading to Adobe Stock is only possible when Firefly 2 is out of beta. Just as when Firefly 1 was in beta.