Quote from: Shuttershock on July 25, 2023, 13:23
I find my weekly upload of 25 images are reviewed in 1 week - However the last 2 weeks every single image has been rejected due to quality which is ridiculous as they are no different in quality from my other 8000 approved images and I have never had more than 1 or 2 rejections each week historically......will see what happened this week!

Had exactly the same thing. Last saturday I uploaded some AI-images in the same quality as some I did before (and which already sold on Adobe Stock). All of them were rejected about 12 hours later because of quality issues. This is very strange. They usually take weeks to review and now in the weekend they can review with in 12 hours?

Quote from: MatHayward on October 12, 2023, 15:52

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on October 10, 2023, 19:11

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.

Three consecutive batches of my submissions, each standing for more than 30 days, have been reviewed. Almost everything in these batches has been rejected due to quality issues, with only one or two exceptions. Two batches were  regular photos, and one batch featured AI-generated content created with Firefly (and upscaled with GigaPixel). The vast majority has been declined due to quality problems. Interestingly, the approved photos had exactly the same quality and were accepted without issues on other stock sites such as Shutterstock, iStock, Dreamstime, and Deposit (for regular photos), some of which have already been sold. Previously, I maintained at least a 95% acceptance rate on Adobe Stock, which is now naturally declining.

What I find most ironic is this:

The database is now filled with AI junk (six fingers, "fruit" logos on laptops, etc.), yet they are now rejecting content created by their own Firefly due to quality problems.

There is clearly a change in the review process, but I wonder if this is the right direction. It seems like they might have lost their way a bit.

Quote from: cobalt on October 12, 2023, 16:08
Can we sell firefly output on Dreamstime?

Or use firefly /generative tools on images and then upload to Dreamstime. Or any other agency that takes ai work?

For us firefly and firefly tools are just part of photoshop workflow.

If it is prohibited to upload anything firefly to other agencies, then please I would like to know that.

I will then only upload ai created with other engines like dall e or stable and and postprocess only with my old Photoshop elements.

Things are getting complicated

Like I mentioned above, I haven't found anything in the Dreamstime TOS that indicates AI training. Also, I haven't come across any statements from Dreamstime about it. If I've overlooked something, I'd appreciate it if you could point it out. So far, it seems safe to use Firefly content for Dreamstime. Of course, I don't offer any guarantees

Getty says they're engaged in AI training, but they don't accept AI content anyway, so that's not a problem. For Dreamstime, I couldn't find any information about whether they are working on an AI engine. In my post above, I've already mentioned that this brings a significant uncertainty. It might currently be safe (according to Adobe's rules) to upload Firefly content to Dreamstime because it seems (again, without guarantees) that they don't use content for AI training. But what if they change that in the future, and your Firefly content is already there?

By the way, it would be nice if Matt could just provide clarity on this. His response to Jo Ann seems to suggest that it really has to be about training an AI model in isolation (so only with the sole purpose of AI training). However, a straightforward yes or no would be much more appreciated.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on October 10, 2023, 19:11
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.).

Although I really appreciate everyone who is contributing to this discussion, whether or not Deposit accepts AI or not is not really the point of this topic 

Thank you for your response. I think I understand why I thought it might not be allowed again. The terms state the following: '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.'

Now, suppose I upload Firefly content to Depositphotos, and after a while, they also develop their own generator that they train with content uploaded by contributors (similar to what Adobe has done). In that case, those images would be used to train AI. However, this immediately becomes a significant limitation on the commercial use allowed for Firefly content. After all, Midjourney scrapes everything from the internet, so over time, there will also be Firefly content in their database

I thought I read somewhere that content generated with Firefly couldn't be sold on other stock sites than on Adobe Stock. I just can't find where I read that or if I got it wrong. This FAQ doesn't provide the answer:

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/firefly-faq-for-adobe-stock-contributors.html#:~:text=Firefly%2Dgenerated%20assets%20from%20the,features%20may%20be%20used%20commercially.

Does anyone know if this is allowed or not according to Adobe?

Quote from: Her Ugliness on October 03, 2023, 14:29

Quote from: Kenneth_17 on October 03, 2023, 14:00

If Adobe truly stands by their statement, shouldn't they remove all content previously created by Midjourney and other generators and only accept AI content made by Firefly? 

What would be the point since Adobe trained Firefly with images created with Midjourney and other generators.
No matter whether you let Midjourney create images or Adobe Firefly - since Firefly was trained with Midjourney images you end up getting images that are the result of unethical practices either way.

The point would be that in that case they would reinforce their words with actions. They say: "We have ethical AI content." Well, apparently not.

But that might be overly naive, I guess 

I still don't fully grasp the fact that Adobe accepts AI content that wasn't created by Adobe Firefly, or at least has accepted it at some point. They argue that AI-generated content generated by Firefly is ethical in the sense that contributors are compensated, and there are no issues with intellectual property. Setting aside whether you agree with that statement or not, the statement exists.

So, implicitly (in my opinion), Adobe believes that all AI content not created with Firefly carries a risk of intellectual property problems. This risk could be for the contributor, but essentially also for the buyer.

If Adobe truly stands by their statement, shouldn't they remove all content previously created by Midjourney and other generators and only accept AI content made by Firefly?  I'm not sure if Adobe can distinguish what's made by Firefly or not, but given the current three-month review time and Firefly only recently exiting beta status, it's likely that most of the existing content wasn't created by Firefly

Totally agree. Shameless.

Is it safe to use holiday names in AI-generated content? Like if I (or actually AI) make a banner for Black Friday or Cyber Monday with that text? Or any international "insert random thing" day? Like international headphone day, or international day of poker players?

Quote from: PokemonMaster on September 15, 2023, 15:02

Quote from: Wilm on September 05, 2023, 07:28If you use the filters "Vector" + "gernerative AI only", you get 120000 results. This is quite a lot considering that these files are not accepted.

I spoke to the support and they are probably going to fix it. Probably, by re-reviewing. Soon, I guess.

At this day, I think, real Vector-AI will be punished. Because Adobe is not accepting Vector AI. While I don't see any clear answer of a line in ToS about it.

Is there a way to question Mat directly? Because I really think it's time to start thinking of AI-vectors as a separate thing, like AI images. Look at Shutterstock, which claims zero tolerance for AI. Their database is full of it. And they will never know what is human-made now, they will never be able to roll it back.

Is this really the intention at all? So, if I remove a minuscule logo with the new 'remove' tool, do I have to label my photo as 'generated with AI'? This completely misses the point, doesn't it? 'Modified by AI' would cover it better, but I still find it completely nonsensical

Edit: Nevermind. I wrote nonsense

https://www.microstockgroup.com/fotolia-com/announcing-adobe-firefly-a-new-family-of-creative-generative-ai-models/msg592314/#msg592314

Quote from: synthetick on September 15, 2023, 10:03

Quote from: Kenneth_17 on September 15, 2023, 08:03
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?

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?

Thank you for your response. Because I don't feel very comfortable with it, I have removed the AI content from the review phase on Adobe Stock and deleted the already accepted images on Dreamstime. I'd rather wait and see how this discussion develops and, in the meantime, I'll just use the AI generators for personal inspiration for real photos.

How much risk does a contributor actually face when uploading generative AI content?

I recently uploaded some AI images (nothing special, more to test if they would be accepted), but not before I had read the terms of the respective AI generators to see if I could use the content for commercial purposes. Furthermore, I adhered to all the guidelines that Adobe Stock imposes on gen-AI content. However, I did use generators that are currently being addressed by Getty Images and are not from one of the "ethical" generators (such as Firefly presents itself, aside from the fact that you can't use it for commercial purposes due to its beta status anyway). So, I tried to "play by the rules" as far as they are currently clear and thus attempted to limit my risks. But how do you view this? Aside from the question of whether you are in favor of or against AI content for stock purposes.

Hi All. I am just starting with stockphotograpy and I am slowly building my portfolio. Sometimes I find the webupload pages not very handy so I started to read into how to use FTP for uploading. I come across a lot of warnings to not use FTP because traffic is not encrypted. So your username and password might be visible for hackers. It is recommended to use SFTP.

Can someone please tell me which Stock-agencies support SFTP? If I google "shuttertock + sftp" I get alot of search results of stockphotos that relate to SFTP

Thanks in advance.