It’s been a few years since I’ve attended an Adobe MAX in person, and while the requisite oohs and ahhs over software update magic were there in all their earnest glory, Adobe also needed a hit—something to reassure its core demographic who are increasingly concerned about those two vowels that have taken much of the oxygen out of the discourse.
And for the most part, they stuck the landing. Adobe ran out several talking heads with assurances that they’re not training their AI on your work and that all of the drama over vague language in contracts was just that—inadequate legalese. The company went out of its way to talk up how much it respects creator rights and that AI isn’t a replacement for creativity; it’s your helpful editing assistant and, in their eyes, a much-needed one as the demand for creative content only continues to grow.
And that makes sense. You don’t want to alienate the folks who rely on your tools to do their job and use that work to train your AI model (or even claim ownership of that IP). But it raises a pretty intriguing albeit nagging question—how do you market AI tools to folks worried about the robots taking their jobs when those people are your target demo? It’s not an easy question to answer in a room full of Adobe faithful because so many of these new features and tricks can make their lives easier.
