A while back, someone posted how many total uploads were made to Adobe Stock per day (or per month or year), broken down into photographs and AI images (and perhaps videos).
I can't find that thread anymore. Could someone give me some data? Or a link to that thread?
Thanks
I think this is the thread (https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/significant-growth-of-adobe-stock-collection-over-the-last-7-months/) you were asking about.
I've continued to keep (intermittent) tabs on the collection growth, as well as the overall disgraceful quality of a lot of the AI images (even this month, there are hands missing fingers, calculators with insane keys, same for chess boards, chairs missing legs, misspelled gibbberish, a fox with five legs, Apple logos, and on and on.
Right now, the collection is 51.5% human-created (466,696,217 of 905,775,578 items). A year ago (Apr 28 2005) it was 56% human created (416,492,700 of 743,421,174). Two years ago (Apr 17 2024) it was 86% (370,758,943 of 429,869,890)
In the last year, acceptances have been 450,984/day. That's down from 833,912/day April 2024 to 2025 but way higher than pre-genAI (254,103/day April 2023 to 2024; 102,754/day April 2022 to 2023)
I stopped uploading but keep selling, with a small portfolio (all photos). I think that means that there's a limited market for what is now about half the collection - otherwise why wouldn't my sales have fallen off a cliff?
Customer demand can only grow so much, and I am fairly sure the collection growth has hugely outpaced demand, even accounting for buyers migrating from Shutterstock or other agencies.
The collection grew 167% from April 2023 to now; it's now just shy of three times the size it was then (2.67 times). Adobe has lost the plot on a lot of things (as their stock price shows; even the $25 billion stock buyback announcement only helped for a few hours yesterday).
It's all such a waste...
if you are not uploading your port might hold up for 6-12 months and then you drop, sometimes very fast. I have had several unplanned breaks in uploading.
many customers find you when they do their weekly browsing in the newest search. without uploads you are invisible.
then there are probably algos that prefer active portfolios.
my ai images sell just as well or badly as my camera images. I also see no specific drop in ai sales.
i have more unsold ai then camera because I uploaded a lot of fun stuff without doing research. but if I do the research sales are just as good as with camera.
I have started uploading again, but my main focus this year is camera video. I think that will be the fastest way to increase my income.
Thank you, Jo Ann, for your thorough response. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
I agree with your comments as well. :)
Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on April 23, 2026, 18:01
I think this is the thread (https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/significant-growth-of-adobe-stock-collection-over-the-last-7-months/) you were asking about.
I've continued to keep (intermittent) tabs on the collection growth, as well as the overall disgraceful quality of a lot of the AI images (even this month, there are hands missing fingers, calculators with insane keys, same for chess boards, chairs missing legs, misspelled gibbberish, a fox with five legs, Apple logos, and on and on.
Right now, the collection is 51.5% human-created (466,696,217 of 905,775,578 items). A year ago (Apr 28 2005) it was 56% human created (416,492,700 of 743,421,174). Two years ago (Apr 17 2024) it was 86% (370,758,943 of 429,869,890)
In the last year, acceptances have been 450,984/day. That's down from 833,912/day April 2024 to 2025 but way higher than pre-genAI (254,103/day April 2023 to 2024; 102,754/day April 2022 to 2023)
I stopped uploading but keep selling, with a small portfolio (all photos). I think that means that there's a limited market for what is now about half the collection - otherwise why wouldn't my sales have fallen off a cliff?
Customer demand can only grow so much, and I am fairly sure the collection growth has hugely outpaced demand, even accounting for buyers migrating from Shutterstock or other agencies.
The collection grew 167% from April 2023 to now; it's now just shy of three times the size it was then (2.67 times). Adobe has lost the plot on a lot of things (as their stock price shows; even the $25 billion stock buyback announcement only helped for a few hours yesterday).
It's all such a waste...
Of course that human created content is smaller and smaller. Human created illustrations waiting for moderation 2 months while ai garbage is moderated and accepted ( ? ? ? ? ) by tons each day.
I was surprised to see that the total collection size this morning was down slightly (1,384,050) since my April 23rd check, and even more surprised to see that the human-created content was up 2,065,734 while the genAI was down 3,272,663.
Photos were down overall, but human-created were up 928,275 while genAI were down 1,446,524. I assume some culling of the chaff has occurred.
Illustrations were similar: down overall but human-created up and genAI down. Vectors were, however, up across the board. Video was up overall but genAI video was down (438,336)
Net result is that the fraction of the collection that's human-created is very slightly up (51.83% vs. 51.5% April 23); the first time since the genAI content was allowed.
That's teasingly encouraging - if it keeps going I might resume uploading (assuming sales continue holding up). In the Q1 2026 earnings call, one of the analysts asked about the size of the Adobe Stock business because Adobe had noted that it was declining faster than expected.
From the Q&A with Mark Murphy with JPMorgan - " And I'm just trying to understand, should we assume the stock business is pretty small."
Shantanu Narayen answered:
"I think as it relates to your question around stock or order of magnitude, it's about a $450 million book of business.
And maybe just to talk a little bit about that, if you had -- if you take out the stock business like-for-like, instead of the 10.9% growth, it would have been approximately 11.2% growth. So just to give you a flavor. Now we still look at that entire business as an opportunity because people do like to start any creation or marketing workflow with a piece of content. That's increasingly become generative. That's why you saw the scale, I think, in how we are doing generations. But hopefully, that gives you a flavor of how we think of that business.
And we want to make sure that we offer a combined royalty-free stock, plus generative AI offering to take advantage of that opportunity."
Possibly they're taking a look at the overall appeal of the collection in light of the decline they saw in Q1?
They seem to be on an aggressive purge against ai creators with multiple accounts. Lots of people complaining their 5 accounts have been blocked.
Their content will be deactivated as well.
Upload limits are still in effect, acceptance for ai still seems to be difficult. Looks like they have enough ai for now.
However, ai keeps selling just as well as camera content in my port. So I think having a large ai collection is still an advantage for adobe.
The other agencies don`t have this.
Quote from: cobalt on May 12, 2026, 09:10
They seem to be on an aggressive purge against ai creators with multiple accounts. Lots of people complaining their 5 accounts have been blocked.
Their content will be deactivated as well.
Upload limits are still in effect, acceptance for ai still seems to be difficult. Looks like they have enough ai for now.
However, ai keeps selling just as well as camera content in my port. So I think having a large ai collection is still an advantage for adobe.
The other agencies don`t have this.
Aggressive purge on Ai garbage would be great news.
Having enough Ai garbage would be great news.
Large collection of Ai garbage is NOT advantage for Adobe.
Especially in vector segment, considering that Adobe moderators can't figure out difference between ai garbage and organic vector so collection is overflood with garbage, simply because ai "creators" can't read a word of English so they don't even have a clue where to submit what.
Bad news is that the buyers cant be sure what is what until they buy crap and than can't do anything with it.
Maybe not right now but in a future will surely cause buyers migration and real, and also cause real, creative, hard working vector creators to think twice before they submit they work in a same collection with ai crap.
Quote from: cobalt on May 12, 2026, 09:10
They seem to be on an aggressive purge against ai creators with multiple accounts. Lots of people complaining their 5 accounts have been blocked.
Their content will be deactivated as well.
About Time! I don't know how much that helps or hurts us, but I'm happy that the invasive accounts, and the resold ready to sell and stolen collections, may be slowing.
The numbers today suggest the genAI culling continues – down 1,916,291 from yesterday (human created is up 88,859 from yesterday)
I'm hedging because if you add the two subtotals Adobe Stock reports they don't equal what they show as the total collection size. That's not new behavior but you can't tell which numbers (if any) are accurate.
The human-created vector count is down from yesterday which would seem odd except that I'd earlier noted some vectors that were almost certainly AI generated but weren't marked as such; possibly they're culling that as well?
Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on May 12, 2026, 17:41
The human-created vector count is down from yesterday which would seem odd except that I'd earlier noted some vectors that were almost certainly AI generated but weren't marked as such; possibly they're culling that as well?
Vectors that were (almost) certainly AI generated but weren't marked as such are accepted for a one simple reason : adobe moderation team had 0 ( ZERO ) training hours about vectors and how to recognize difference between ai crap and human created vector.
95% of their moderators don't know difference between Ai, EPS and SVG files. They don't know that those files even exist. And nobody from Adobe found necessary to educate them or train their own moderation team....
On top of that - Adobe instructed them to accept everything as it is submitted unless they are 100% ( yeah, sure without training :o ) sure that it is Ai created.
Which of course is not fair to human creators but hey... why should they be fair to people who created them ? #sarcasm
"hands missing fingers, calculators with insane keys, same for chess boards, chairs missing legs, misspelled gibbberish, a fox with five legs, Apple logos,"
Annoying when I see my rejections for IP when all elements in the illustration are my own and the too similar rejections even though they accepted other photos/videos of the same subject as did all other agencies.
AI just making a mess everywhere it goes.
Stock price continues downward trend.
"Maybe not right now but in a future will surely cause buyers migration and real, and also cause real, creative, hard working vector creators to think twice before they submit they work in a same collection with ai crap."
I don't do vectors but interesting thought.
I asked in the discord if anyone has numbers of how many files adobe is accepting now versus the last two years and of course the smart Jill keeps track of it all.
In 2025 Adobe aggressively culled the upload limits from 3-10k a week down to 200-500 a week. That killed the industrial ai production fully automated guys.
They also added the lottery acceptance system that hits ai the hardest, but sadly also affects other content.
But Adobe is now down to accepting 1-2 million files a week, including ai, which is the normal volume that the 3 large agencies usually get.
The industrial ai boom is over.
Adobe Library Growth (Weekly Average):
2024: 7,3 Mio Assets/week
2025: 4,8 Mio Assets/week
2026 YTD: 1,5 Mio Assets/week
Ai is still the dominant content uploaded to Adobe, only 500k non ai content uploaded every week.
What are the acceptance numbers on other agencies?
Basically if you do camera content you will not have a lot of competition.
Thanks, Jasmine. Interesting information, indeed.
It's good to know that for those of us who produce videos or photos with real cameras face less competition than the ai producers. It makes sense though since the former has a much higher entry barrier. Now the key is to remain consistent!
Quote from: danielvisuals on May 17, 2026, 00:28
Thanks, Jasmine. Interesting information, indeed.
It's good to know that for those of us who produce videos or photos with real cameras face less competition than the ai producers. It makes sense though since the former has a much higher entry barrier. Now the key is to remain consistent!
It used to be like 2 million camera content and handmade illustrations a week.
Where did that production go? Did everybody switch to only ai?
It is a mystery.
That's a significant drop in camera uploaded content.
We can only speculate.
I would say it's probably a combination of factors.
Some producers might have fully switched to producing ai content as they may find it easier and more profitable for now.
Jasmine, I believe you are a good example of that, no? Didn't you focus on ai generated content for the last 2 years? Well I guess many others have done the same. But the trend may now reverse with the significant culling of ai generated content on Adobe.
Quote from: danielvisuals on May 18, 2026, 00:10
That's a significant drop in camera uploaded content.
We can only speculate.
I would say it's probably a combination of factors.
Some producers might have fully switched to producing ai content as they may find it easier and more profitable for now.
Jasmine, I believe you are a good example of that, no? Didn't you focus on ai generated content for the last 2 years? Well I guess many others have done the same. But the trend may now reverse with the significant culling of ai generated content on Adobe.
Yes, I did mostly ai for Adobe from 2023 until Rejectiongate in April 2025. Around 6k images.
I did it to learn about a new technology, but also because I was mostly housebound as a family carer. So doing ai from home gave me great flexibility.
I actually started doing ai several years earlier, just for fun for myself. Never thought it could become stock content.
But the biggest disadvantage: I had no content for other agencies, except for a little editorial or food clips and images.
Also I found the process very inefficient, because the majority of created content was unusable or needed a lot of post processing.
But if Adobe gave me a decent acceptance rate, I would still try to add ai content.
I would love to know what the upload volumes on istock and shutterstock are.
Did they go down as well?
Does anyone have numbers?
Quote from: cobalt on May 16, 2026, 20:12
They also added the lottery acceptance system...
;D
Lottery acceptance 😖
Also incompetent reviewers, lacking experience and training, who are hired help, for offshore contract review services.
Quote from: Uncle Pete on May 18, 2026, 16:20
Also incompetent reviewers, lacking experience and training, who are hired help, for offshore contract review services.
You don't want to know the details about reviewers, or moderators as Adobe love to call them. Trust me. 8)
Quote from: Madede on May 18, 2026, 18:00
Quote from: Uncle Pete on May 18, 2026, 16:20
Also incompetent reviewers, lacking experience and training, who are hired help, for offshore contract review services.
You don't want to know the details about reviewers, or moderators as Adobe love to call them. Trust me. 8)
I do and I also have read some posts on the Adobe forum about the random rejections and the chance, luck of the draw, getting some reviewer who just clicks for their quota.
I've paused video uploads to Adobe Stock for now. The last set of videos, all created in After Effects and Cinema 4D, were flat rejected for 'similar content' - confusing as they were all different animations, and I couldn't find anything similar in the library.
Not had many issues before - and these things take ages to make.
The flurry of AI-gen videos continues...
This is perhaps the reason why handmade is slowing down, for me anyway. Lack of confidence / waste of time.
Quote from: Uncle Pete on May 19, 2026, 16:34
Quote from: Madede on May 18, 2026, 18:00
Quote from: Uncle Pete on May 18, 2026, 16:20
Also incompetent reviewers, lacking experience and training, who are hired help, for offshore contract review services.
You don't want to know the details about reviewers, or moderators as Adobe love to call them. Trust me. 8)
I do and I also have read some posts on the Adobe forum about the random rejections and the chance, luck of the draw, getting some reviewer who just clicks for their quota.
O.K.....u asked for it 8)
Let me give you a hint.
If moderator get hourly quota and adobe register how much time he/she spends in moderation in one queue simply by measuring his/her time spent in a specific browser login to adobe platform...
What is happening if moderator at the same time from a same desktop, laptop use different browser ? ;)
Same 8 hour quota can be done in 4 ? Of course that attention on details are reduced by double but hey....it is your upload / rejection stats or should I say your money not theirs.
Even better to say - It is their time not yours that you have spent on uploading, keywording etc etc etc
They are just interested in reducing their work time.
P.S. And that is just a top of the iceberg.
P.S.S. Please check you private messages.
Quote from: Madede on May 20, 2026, 11:32
P.S. And that is just a top of the iceberg.
Yes, that sounds realistic. Anything to pad the time and make the work go faster.
There appears to be some housecleaning underway, although adding up subtotals appears to be beyond Adobe Stock. Today the collection total reports as 903,940,267, down quite a bit from the reported 905,775,578 on April 23
If you add today's genAI and exclude genAI subtotals, the collection is only 900,831,252 (versus 905,587,700 by adding subtotals April 23) nearly 5 million fewer items in just over a month.
Today the collection is 52.14% human-created, up from 51.5% Apr 23
Almost all the asset types have fewer genAI items over that period, but genAI vectors have increased (28,963,599 today vs 26,700,277 Apr 23)
A big drop in genAI illustrations: 4,410,698 fewer
If I hadn't looked at today's acceptances into the collection (AI slop is still coming in, sadly) I'd feel somewhat optimistic
Well, they recently removed one image of mine for "Audit removal: Incompatible with Terms". This was originally submitted 4 years ago pre AI (and I have never submitted AI) and is a landscape with no man-made anything in it. I have no idea what term it was incompatible with. They might have removed more, I just noticed this because it was at the top of the list briefly before getting shuffled back to slot it in 4 years ago.
I can accept the loss of a few images if they actually cleaned house on the AI slop, but I don't really trust them to be competent with much, it might just be more of the acceptance lottery in effect.
Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on May 27, 2026, 15:29
There appears to be some housecleaning underway, although adding up subtotals appears to be beyond Adobe Stock. Today the collection total reports as 903,940,267, down quite a bit from the reported 905,775,578 on April 23
If you add today's genAI and exclude genAI subtotals, the collection is only 900,831,252 (versus 905,587,700 by adding subtotals April 23) nearly 5 million fewer items in just over a month.
Today the collection is 52.14% human-created, up from 51.5% Apr 23
Almost all the asset types have fewer genAI items over that period, but genAI vectors have increased (28,963,599 today vs 26,700,277 Apr 23)
A big drop in genAI illustrations: 4,410,698 fewer
If I hadn't looked at today's acceptances into the collection (AI slop is still coming in, sadly) I'd feel somewhat optimistic
That would be great news !!!!
I think that Adobe is quite aware that human creators are not willing to compete with AI crap and human creators definitely NOT UPLOADING so much content as before.
Complete Serbian "moderation team" wasn't working last Friday (22. May. 2026 ) due -NOT ENOUGH FILES FOR MODERATION.
That fits with Jills observation, Adobe getting only 500k non ai files a week now.
I wonder what it is like at other agencies. Is anyone following the acceptance vomune on shutterstock and istock?
Is that also just 500k a week now?
To me that looks like uploading camera content is now an advantage with less competition.