Nudity and other issues which appear to violate Adobe Generative AI Guidelines [merged thread]

[Starsson]

Hello Adobe and its collective users

I am writing to you not only as a devoted user of Adobe’s suite of creative tools but also as a professional photographer whose work has been recognized and displayed in museum settings. My specialization in classic nudes has allowed me to explore the human form in a manner that celebrates beauty, form, and artistic expression. However, I have encountered a significant challenge with the AI restrictions placed on editing images that contain nudity, even when such images are created within a professional, artistic context.

As an artist whose work often involves nuanced and sensitive subjects, I understand and respect the complexities of creating ethical AI tools that serve a wide user base. However, the current limitations significantly impact my creative process and professional workflow, particularly when it comes to editing backgrounds for nude or semi-nude images. These restrictions not only prolong my work but also inhibit my artistic expression, compelling me to seek alternative solutions that may not offer the same level of quality and integration as Adobe’s products.

I propose the consideration of the following points, which I believe could benefit both Adobe and its professional users:

Artistic Integrity and Professional Use: Recognition of the professional and artistic context in which tools are used can help differentiate between content that is genuinely creative and that which the restrictions aim to prevent.

Ethical Use Policy: An ethical use policy that accommodates professional artists and photographers, possibly through a verification process, ensuring that our work is not unduly censored while maintaining legal and ethical standards.

Custom Solutions for Professionals: The development of specialized software versions that allow more flexibility for editing sensitive content, with appropriate safeguards to prevent misuse.

Feedback and Advisory Panel: Establishing a panel of professionals from the art and photography community to provide ongoing feedback and insights on how Adobe’s tools can better serve creative professionals.

Transparent Guidelines: The creation of clear, transparent guidelines that navigate the legal and ethical landscape, especially regarding sensitive content, to ensure users can understand and comply with Adobe’s policies.

I am fully committed to engaging in a constructive dialogue and am willing to be part of a solution that respects both the creative needs of artists and the ethical considerations of digital content. I believe that by working together, we can find a balanced approach that supports artistic expression while adhering to shared values and responsibilities.

Thank you for considering my perspective on this matter. I am hopeful for an opportunity to discuss this further and explore how we can make Adobe’s tools even more inclusive and accommodating for professional artists and photographers.    Steven Williams 

[Nancy OShea]

@Free_art,

You can create whatever you wish with Adobe's suite of desktop tools. Nobody's stopping you. 

However, if it goes through any of Adobe's online services, it must conform to Adobe's Content Rules. 

[Dave28161132d2ux]

I can feel you looking down your nose at me, but your lack of respect is misplaced.  I'm not arguing about AI itself.  AI is here., it's here to stay, and Adobe has decided to make it part of their platform.  I'm not talking about talent, skill, or imagination.  I get the picture, a lot of you are purists and I actually hold that characteristic in high regard.  A lot of your (maybe my) talent has been used to create a system that can make anyone look like they have talent or imagination.  I have my own thoughts aoubt what kind of limits should be put on AI.  I understand the avalable alternatives, but these are completely different topics than I am arguing and that's not the point of this discussion. (adobe-firefly-discussions/nudity-and-semi-nudity-using-ai-and-its-imposed-restrictions)

I am arguing about the morality police who decide what can and can't be created with Firefly, PERIOD.  Yes, all tools have limitations, but these are limitations someone is deciding to chain to a tool for reasons that have no business weighing the tool down.

I am not a chat bot.  I am not a troll.  This argument is valid and will be until I, as a paying member of Adobe products, get a stratight answer.  So far, all any of you are doing is changing the subject and dancing around it, very transparently.  (This is my first post on anything Adobe and I expected far better to be honest.)

Do any of you have the capacity to come up with a valid defence against my position???

Side note: I'd ask those higher up on the food chain if they should allow an un-paid volunteer, vendor, or anyone representing Adobe insult clients who've paid thousands and thousands of dollars over their lifetime using their products.

[Free_art]

Thanks, but I've actually been formally trained by some of the best artists in the world. 

First of all, art is more than just "drawing".  "Drawing" is a skill or tool, which can be used to create art, but is not art, anymore than Photoshop (or Photoshopping) is art.

I'm not talking about getting an ai generator to create art for me, I'm talking about taking my art into Photoshop to either retouch for use in prints, online applications, client work, etc.  You know....the reason Photoshop was invented in the first place.  I was there. I remember.

Could I use the stamp tool to meticulously go through the image pixel by pixel and modify any defects or other elements that need modification, yes I have done it that way for many years.  It is a tedious, time-expensive process that can increase bottom line significantly, and even the highest experts can't do it anywhere near as accurately as Photoshop's AI.

"Generative Fill" is what i am talking about. 

For example, this has happens almost daily since subscribing to the new photoshop:

I'll have a drawing, rendering, painting, photo of a sculpture, photo of a person, etc, etc, etc, into Photoshop and need to adjust the eye position slightly to make the model, or subject matter look at "the camera".  If the model, or subject matter of the piece appears to be even slightly female and has more than the average amount of skin showing (not necessarily nude), has cleavage showing, has anything at all near her mouth (like food), is leaning forward, has a "satisfied" look on her face, (I could go on but you hopefully get the picture), the Generative AI refuses to modify the image in any way, and tells me it thinks the image is "illegal" 

Same problem if I have an image that I've applied a digital effect to and want to alter that effect in any way, or if I want to move, or change faces or body parts, or interestingly enough if I want to reduce the amount of skin, cleavage, remove digital artifacts, etc in an image.  It detects something in the image that it determines is somehow "illegal" and stops working.  Imagine if your pencil did that when you were hand drawing something.

Photoshop is a tool for cleaning up and making seamless alterations to an image.  Generative AI is a game changer for that purpose, but ultimately it is just a digital pencil that should draw whatever I tell it to.

Will a (very small) number of people use that for to create actually illegal artwork? of course.  Is it your pencil's job to stop that from happening? Absolutely not.

Salman Rushdie probably said it best when he said "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."

History is full of priceless art pieces that one group found horribly offensive while another group found enormously inspirational.  I have seen pieces of art that I found highly offensive for any number of reasons over the years, but not for one second have I ever even considered the possibility that the artist should have been stopped from creating it.  If once it's created, presented to the public, and found to actually be breaking a legitimate law, then that person should be penalized accordingly.  That person however, should never be stopped in the process of creating that artwork. Never, ever, never!  For any reason. Never!

Tell them beforehand what might get them thrown in jail? Absolutely.  Warn them mid-process that they are treading a dangerous line? No problem. Stop them from creating it? NEVER! 

Obviously this is a subject I am very passionate about, and interestingly enoughin the decades that I have been doing art, I think I've only ever done two or three actual nudes (not including art school stuff).  Just not my thing.  And I don't know that I have ever done anything depicting violence of any kind.  Again, not my thing.  

The idea that anyone, let alone a tool, could stop me from doing it if I wanted to is absolutely appauling to me and gives the finger to everything art is, and has always been about.

Personal expression.  Whether good, bad or ugly.

It has to be allowed to happen. No matter what, or you start down a slippery slope that has literally destroyed cultures and civilizations many times in human history.

As a final thought, to take it out of the realm of "art".  When "carding" first started happening a few years back, the majority of people said "I don't have a problem with it because I don't do anything illegal anyway so why not?"

Then innocent people started dying and everyone realized that stepping on people's rights and freedom in any way to stop the possibility of something bad happening is no solution, it's just yet another offense.  The only solution is information, and warnings but ultimately allowing people to whatever they are going to do, then dealing with the aftermath.

Nudes, people.  You're supposed to be artists. The most significant artistic tool to be invented in centuries doesn't allow you to work on nudes, and you have no issue with that?  Really?

What would art history look like today if pencils and paintbrushes had stopped artists from working on nudes?

"Art is freedom - freedom ofexpression - and it's message has resonated through society for centuries" Peter M. Brant.

[Free_art]

Specifically for me it's the Generative Fill in Photoshop for the purposes of retouching images as per my reply to the post above.  Ultimately though I'm talking about any "content restrictions" imposed by anyone, especially anyone outside government, let alone the modern version of a pencil and eraser.

[Free_art]

Ah yes, and there it is, the old "I'm not doing anything wrong, so why shouldn't you be able to stop me on the street, search me, search my car, do so without a lawyer and use your own personal optinion to decide if I'm doing anything wrong, and then stop me from doing it?"

I have no problem switching to another program if this doesn't stop.  My concern is what effect does this have on the future of art?

Do me a favour, go get an art history text book.  Go through that book and tear out any page that depicts nudity, violence, se(x), self-harm, profanity, drug-use, extremism, terrorism, hate and yes, even harm to children.

When you're done, let us know how many pages, if any are left in that book.

That's the effect Adobe would have had on the past.

Now let's look forward and think about what effect Adobe will have on the future of art if their "content rules" (aka. personal opinions on constitutes good art) continue to limit the abilities of new artists to express themselves completely.

How many pieces of art will never exist because the artist's digital pencil stopped them from creating something because it decided they "might" create something that "might" offend somebody somewhere.  Not even something illegal, just something that "might" offend someone, or simply doesn't fall inside the narrow brackets of what Adobe apparently thinks is good art.

I can't believe I'm even having this conversation with people who consider themselves artists, but any art tool that imposes it's own opinion on the content of any art and stops it from happening, CAN NOT EXIST UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!  Let alone what is probably the most widely used art tool in the world.

The consequences to the future of art are catastrophic!

[rayek.elfin]

A corporate entity such as Adobe isn't beholden to you or anyone else. It's not a democracy. Simple as that. Take it or leave it.

If you want to take genAI prompts further than the censored ones provided by Adobe, your recourse is to (for example) download open source tools like Krita and its genAI plugin. Free, and completely uncensored. Download additional AI models from Civitai and other sources.

Of course, those AI models all rely on stolen imagery from countless artists just like you.

Your responsibility, your choice.

[Monika Gause]

---

@Free_art  schrieb:

I have no problem switching to another program if this doesn't stop.  My concern is what effect does this have on the future of art?

---

You are retouching, right? So what does that have to do with art?

I suppose you've never heard of teenagers being desperate because the are bullied with fake images that mock their body or of (most of the time female) celebrities having their portrait edited into nude photos and being blackmailed with that? That is a pest already, but with AI unfortunate anybody would be able to pull that off if it doesn't get limited.

My concern is about the future of humanity if peoples' first thought about any artistic medium is how they can create and edit nudes with it. 

[D Fosse]

Yes! Ten upvotes to Monika. I've been trying to make that exact point before, but not as eloquently as this 🙂

All those people complaining about "censorship" should take a moment to consider wider implications.

[Dave28161132d2ux]

Free_art, your arguments are so well formed and I thank you for taking the time to inform so thoroughly. I do know something about history and I think your Salman Rushdie/Peter M Brant quotes are spot on for this issue. Although, I'd change the word 'centuries' to 'millennia' in Peter's quote if I had my input.

I had no idea Generative Fill was doing that in Photoshop and I am more appalled than I was with just the Firefly Issue. This seems more of a rampant censorship issue throughout the Adobe culture than something limited to Firefly.  This is nothing more than stifling ideas and burning books.  "It has to be allowed to happen. No matter what, or you start down a slippery slope that has literally destroyed cultures and civilizations many times in human history."  I'd ask those who are not well informed about history, society, and culture to read that again and fact check it for yourselves. 

I am from the US (as is Adobe).  Here, we have the 1st Amendment to our Constitution that protects these freedoms.  Other countries have similar protections, in France, it's is in their Constitution, Germany's Article 5, Spain's Article 20, Russia's . . . hmmmm.  Regardless, this is something that progressive cultures have realized is so imperative, it's written into the basal ganglia equivalent of their legislation.  The BIOS of a computer, a comapany's mission statement, basic RGB color pallet all of which are the first source of information a system goes through in the heirarchy of decision making.

No doubt, many of you can't wait to hit the 'reply' button and point out the fact that Adobe is its own entity and can make decisions to what it should and shouldn't allow.  Yes, that's 100% true.  Why though?  Why, knowing the disgusting things censorship can cause, knowing the magnificent importance of art to the individual, knowing the history of art and the effect it can have on society, etc. would Adobe decide to make bylaws further restricting creativity?  Not just restricting, but in this case it sounds like it's choking creativity.  Let's make everything beige, that way it will mix with everything and it won't offend anyone.

Those of you who are so easily offended should compare your perspective to that of the macro-environment.  Imagine you're an alien who's able to rewind/fastforward/slomo/zoom in and out of our planet throughout history and actually see the lives being changed, then the progress humanity has made over time, and watch how art plays a massive part.  Watch the individual creating the art, it spreading to the community, then to the country, then the world.  If these constrictions are correct about Adobe's culture, they're having a chilling effect on ideas.  Adobe has a massive share of the market.  Who's to say the next Shepard Fairey won't just get so discouraged that they give up and the world misses out on something that could have had such a positive influence on all of us?

[Dave28161132d2ux]

Thank you for the clarification Free_art.  That makes sense.

[Dave28161132d2ux]

D Fosse and Monika Gause, those of us "complaining about censorship" ARE considering the "wider implications."  Bullying, mocking, and making fun of people's figures are not only harmful to the individual, but to an extent society as a whole.  However, the larger issue with wider implications is what we've already been talking about.  I don't think anyone's arguing there's no issue with bullying, but by far, the larger issue, worse of the two evils, is censorship.  If body shaming or bullying is the underlying issue here for you, I can see your concern, but that's not a good enough reason to censor anyone.  (For the record, I have been fat most of my life.  I finally worked my butt off for 3 years and literally had the body of the Statue of David, abs and all.  It was the ONLY time in my life I was happy with my body.  COVID hit and I've been fat again ever since.  I am now over 340 lbs. I say that so you recognize I am someone who can talk from personal experience.)

"My concern is about the future of humanity if peoples' first thought about any artistic medium is how they can create and edit nudes with it. " Look at art going back even 10s of thousands of years and see how it's been used.  Art STARTED with the appreciation of the human body and nudity!  In each artistic era, along the way, the human forms have changed to fit the ideals of their time.  From figurines of fat women with 30+or- breasts found in ancient caves to 1500 year old Indian architecture covered in women with chest to waist ratios only available with plastic surgery in our time to the zaftig figure popular a few hundred years ago to the terribly thin models in the fashion industry within the past 30 years or so. This kind of thing is going to happen with our without AI.  It has been happening since art began.  You cannot stop it.  It's too deeply ingrained in the human psyche.

We need rules about AI, even at the government level, but not for artistic expression.  You can express yourself in any way you want.  Now that AI is the new medium and is very popular, we're going to make an exception?  Unacceptable. 

[Dave28161132d2ux]

Excerpt from my other post:

"No doubt, many of you can't wait to hit the 'reply' button and point out the fact that Adobe is its own entity and can make decisions to what it should and shouldn't allow.  Yes, that's 100% true.  Why though?  Why, knowing the disgusting things censorship can cause, knowing the magnificent importance of art to the individual, knowing the history of art and the effect it can have on society, etc. would Adobe decide to make bylaws further restricting creativity?  Not just restricting, but in this case it sounds like it's choking creativity.  Let's make everything beige, that way it will mix with everything and it won't offend anyone."

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@Dave28161132d2ux the reality is while your intentions may be benevolent, others could use the service for malicious purposes. Companies have no way to determine if the AI edit/creation should be allowed (art) or if it should be blocked (creating nudes of an unwilling participant).

It's not choking creativity at all - there are other means to edit and create art using Adobe products long before AI was available. There are also services with plugins for Adobe products should you wish/need to use unrestricted AI generation.

If you feel this strongly about AI as a means to create unrestricted art, then commit to another AI service. If Adobe sees enough users jumping ship from Firefly to Stable Diffusion or Dall-E, then maybe they will be more apt to listen to users requesting this type of access.

[anna37269087le7k]

SAME...

[Dave28161132d2ux]

I was responding to your message as I was reading, then I saw this. "There are also services with plugins for Adobe products should you wish/need to use unrestricted AI generation."  Are you saying there's some kind of code I can implement within Firefly, Photoshop, Premier, etc that will allow me to create whatever I want without restriction?  If so, I've spent a lot of time here arguing something that's a complete moot point.  How do I do this?

[droopydog500]

Are you saying there's some kind of code I can implement within Firefly, Photoshop, Premier, etc that will allow me to create whatever I want without restriction?

Not to have Adobe Firefly generate without restrictions. I believe what Kevin was referring to is plug-ins for third party AI generators.

    droopy

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@Dave28161132d2ux no - there are plugins from the different AI vendors that allow you to use their engine within Photoshop to create unrestricted images. Some are even available on the Adobe Exchange.

https://exchange.adobe.com/apps/cc/4be3e038/photo-stable

https://exchange.adobe.com/apps/cc/8c3dcbe7/flying-dog-for-stable-diffusion-and-dall-e-2

[tonya20624874]

That no longer works.  Since the latest update. It 'see's' all the underlying layers. Including those turned off.  That's just crazy overkill in my opinion. 

[tonya20624874]

Both of those plugins seem to be scams. At least from the reviews. They either don't work. Or cannot be installed. Suport is reported to be imaginary.  

[Dave28161132d2ux]

Ok, but these are using my local hardware, right?  I don't have the kind of scratch to be able to do what I want to do by having to buy all my own stuff.

BTW, I just want someone from Adobe to acknowledge my disgust.  "If Adobe sees enough users jumping ship from Firefly to Stable Diffusion or Dall-E, then maybe . . ."  I don't have the bandwidth to jump ship and use my hardware.  Anything else isn't going to have the quality Adobe does either.  If enough people voice their opinion, maybe Adobe will wake up too.

I'll continue with the response I was writing before I saw the plugin bit:

"@Dave28161132d2ux the reality is while your intentions may be benevolent, others could use the service for malicious purposes. Companies have no way to determine if the AI edit/creation should be allowed (art) or if it should be blocked (creating nudes of an unwilling participant)."

- I'm not talking about using Adobe in a normal corporate environment. I'm talking from a personal use or more progressive business use standpoint. A super easy fix here would to have Adobe restrain a certain version of products for a corporate environment or for people who are easily offended and another version that only restricts things like hate speech and worse. You could even have individual companies control what criteria they will and will not allow.

"It's not choking creativity at all - there are other means to edit and create art using Adobe products long before AI was available. There are also services with plugins for Adobe products should you wish/need to use unrestricted AI generation."

-It is choking creativity. Not everyone has the $$$ to build a system that can seriously run these kinds of computations.  Plus, everyone knows Adobe is the best, there is none higher (at least that's the way I've always felt). I want that quality available in everything I do without compromise. I don't want to have to walk on eggshells on the off chance that someone who will NEVER see my work, might see my work.  I WANT TO USE AI.  Yes, I can use Photoshop and I still do.  This is a new tool though.  That's like saying "I'm going to use Photoshop, but I'm never going to use cut and paste or the rubber stamp tool."  "Use Photoshop instead." seems to be popping up a bunch and it's a terrible argument.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@Dave28161132d2ux None of this would use your local hardware. All of it is cloud based. Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, Open AI, etc. are not local resource-driven AI. The plugins are connected to the cloud service to generate an image the same as Firefly.

[tonya20624874]

Adobe's censorship of Generative Ai is a real problem. Mainly because
anyone with 'too much' skin showing gets the 'community standards'
nonsense. A prime example is a couple I shot not long ago. Male in slacks
and suspenders. No shirt. Female in shoulderless top. Short skirt. I
wanted to generate a Victorian sitting room around them. It not only
censored them. But now it censores them when I paint over the bare skin.
Because now it 'sees' the invisible underlying layers. It's nuts.

At this point. The only reason I use Lr is because of its mapping module.
It won't tether to Sony. Which I use.
I use Capture one for studio work and professional retouching. Lr is for a
specific client that needs accurate gps metadata. For now . It's simpler
and faster with Lr.

As soon as a competitor provides something comparable. I'll likely be
moving to them.
It's kind of sad. As I've been with Adobe since Photoshop 2. But they are
doing it to themselves.

[Dave28161132d2ux]

I responded to this, but I think even the forum censored me, because I said something like ". . . urinating in the wind.", but I used another word for urinating.  It didn't post my reply.

Here's the gist.  These are half measures.  It's not using Adobe's AI and those specific links look very sketchy to me. 

This fight is noble, but I have many other hills I've got to go die on.  This is a sad day though.  I always thought Adobe was a different company.  I've used Adobe since the mid 90s and it's always been the best.  Maybe someone with decision making capacity and a backbone will see enough users reacting to this and make course correcting changes some day.

For now, my genuine thanks Kevin and all of you who took the time to look at my posts.  Seems like a good group of people.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

AI competitors to Firefly - Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, Topaz, CoPilot, Midjourney, even Canva are all cloud based and do not require you to build a local system to support or run them. Some require subscriptions but also have free-to-use options to test with.

The links I posted were examples offered through the Adobe Exchange - they aren't spam but also vary in support and updates for latest versions, etc. If you do your own research you can find stable plugins for Photoshop or use the competitor solution outright.

Either way, we all can debate the merits of "censoring" nudity in Adobe Firefly AI but until a realistic solution to prevent it's misuse beyond the "honor system" is avaible and flawless, I doubt things will change. Adobe has to limit their liability due to misuse both in training AND generative results.

Read up on the current lawsuits going on with other companies and you can quickly see why Adobe took the stance they did with their AI. If you don't agree with it - use one of the many competitors that still allow nudity.

[Starsson]

Yes, I concur. It is happening not only at Adobe but also at Midjourney and other places. This is crazy when showing a man's chest or a woman's mid-section becomes pornagraphic.