Nudity and Semi nudity using AI and its imposed restrictions.

[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]

"...we should just use Sensei. I looked that up because I didn't know [what] it is, apparently it only works on Premiere and AE..."

By @QINGCHARLES

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Photoshop has been powered with Sensei technology since 2021. See below for more details.

[Clinton Lubbe]

@QINGCHARLES I can help you, had the same frustrations but found a good workflow solution inside of photoshop.

[Fotoworkdesign]

Keine Einschränkungen 

[DdavidChung]

Why do you think you need AI to combine (composite) two images?

By Nancy OShea 

This is a very funny question, like...
Why do you think you need Photoshop to draw?
Why do you think Leonardo da Vinci needs oil paints to paint "Monna Lisa"?
Yeah, there are many ways to do things, artists just "can" pick any one way they want. Pencil, oil paint, fingers, scissors and paper, camera, graphics tablet...
The reason can be "it's more creative", "it's faster", "it's convenient", or just "they want to try it".

[Nancy OShea]

Good artists know how to create art with whatever tools & techniques are available. They've been doing it for millennia without any assistance from computers or open AI tech.

That said, AI can be a useful addition to the artist's tool box, but it's not a one size-fits-all solution for everything. Knowing when & where to use AI effectively & responsibly is the challenge we're all still coming to terms with. And it won't be resolved in this public discussion.

[DdavidChung]

@Nancy OShea 

I agree that "it won't be resolved in this public discussion."

The current situation seems to be that artists feel this: "for so long, we've used Photoshop to handle these types of photos or images. Now they release Firefly within the Photoshop ecosystem, we naturally assume it should handle the same tasks it always could, right?" And unless explicitly blocked, it should indeed have this capability.

However, artists find that's not the case. Firefly has imposed certain restrictions, resulting in an inconsistent coverage of functions within the same ecosystem. Furthermore, it over blocks some uses that weren’t even officially claimed to be blocked.

For some artists, this feels somewhat akin to the transition from traditional hand-drawing to digital drawing, where they might have expected digital tools to do everything hand-drawing could. But instead, the digital product says something like, "The night is evil, so we won’t give you black color to draw." This will make them unable to even draw black hair and feel frustrated.

So yes, artists complain here won’t change much, but it’s understandable why they want to complain. After all, the advertisements used to entice users to pay for the service didn’t mention these functional discrepancies.

Currently, artists looking for change are left with a few options:

1. Directly petition Photoshop’s official team in hopes that enough collective feedback will lead to changes.
2. Hope for a less restrictive competitor to emerge, allowing them to migrate.
3. Use a more cumbersome multi-stage process, such as exporting from Photoshop -> processing via Tensor.art (or another unrestricted external AI tool) -> returning to Photoshop for final edits, thereby bypassing Firefly’s limitations.

[QINGCHARLES]

I get around it in Photoshop itself. It is fairly easily tricked. As long as it can't see a feminine-looking person in the photo, it'll let you do background removal, canvas extend etc. If I want to do canvas extend (my most common use because I get photos that end up needing to be 1:1 cropped for socials but the subject is cropped too close already), then I crop out most of the woman, extend what remains of the canvas, copy that new image, CTRL+Z to get the subject back, change canvas size and drop in the extra. It's frustrating that Photoshop won't let us do it directly, but we can get around it, so that in the end their restriction is functionally and totally pointless at achieving whatever weird aim it is trying to get at.

[and on another note, I recently paid for Luminar Neo's Gen AI features and the restrictions are essentially identical -- if doesn't work in PS it won't work in Neo either]

[Tommy James]

The problem is many of the time it blocks things, that are not violating the TOS. Family vacation photos are blocked if someone is in a bathing suit. Professional model photographers can hardly use generative fill for touch-ups and corrections. Yes, you can use the old ways, but we are paying for the updated technology to speed up workflow, as Adobe has described their latest products. generative fill blocks things that have too much skin. When trying to edit fingers or toes it blocks constantly. It's not even nude content and it's blocking non-violating things.

Bottom line: If it's not breaking the TOS, it shouldn't be blocked. Otherwise, update the TOS to correctly reflect the filters.

[daniellei4510]

For whatever good it might do, when gen fill gives me an incorrect violation warning, I take advantage of the option to submit an example of what I was trying to do, along with the image in question. With luck, Adobe programmers are taking such errors into account.

[QINGCHARLES]

Me too, every single time I forward them the image. There's no way to know if anyone receives these or if it's a black hole, sadly.

[QINGCHARLES]

This is an exact summary of the problem. Thank you.

[daniellei4510]

What's especially odd is that even the shape of a selection will trigger a violation, while changing the same will work as gen fill should. 

[Tommy James]

Same. I must have sent them over 100 so far with the picture and description

[Tommy James]

yeah. Fingers especially for me. Apparently, it thinks I am trying to make [removed] or something lol

[QINGCHARLES]

It's definitely the distance to the person too. When I see something in the background I need to erase and it's a decent number of pixels from the subject of the photo I let out an audible sigh of relief as I know it probably won't give me a lecture today.

[Satrap Web]

It's actually very simple. Those paying for and using the Adobe Suite are typically professionals. Place the limitations on Firefly online and remove the lmiitations in the desktop software.

This is a very simple thing to impelement, as a software engineer I should know.

[rayek.elfin]

...not that simple. The same desktop software is used in schools, colleges, and universities. Both by adults and under age people.

And what about religious institutes? And government places? Or businesses whose management want to avoid their designers/employees from abusing genAI for unwanted imagery?

Adobe software used at home by professionals is often shared with their children.

It's never as simple as it seems. Human society and behaviour are very, very messy. There is no black-and-white answer within that context. Only "it depends" answers apply.

[Tommy James]

Actually what is very very plain and simple is that they lower the restrictions so that family vacation photos, and editing of feet, or hands are not triggered and do not allow us to use the service we are paying for while NOT violating the terms of service. Even without nudity, it blocks things incorrectly, and many of us report every time. Well over 100 reports for me with pictures included.  The filters and system are broken. There is no other way to defend it. 

As far as your claim about schools and children, they sell those in certain packages. Student and business packages. My high school student has the All Apps student package I bought them and I have the regular package. They pay us Adobe Stock contributors depending on which package the buying person or company has. Therefore, they can release highly filtered versions to schools and businesses while giving the general public the option of lower filtered for professional photographers with much lower detection that doesn't trigger like crazy. 

[beauxlefoto]

"It's never as simple as it seems. Human society and behaviour are very, very messy. There is no black-and-white answer within that context. Only "it depends" answers apply." - @rayek.elfin 

All the more reason to not have any censorship dictated by humans or arbitrary and subjective rules. It is actually very simple... have a checkbox that you are over 18 when you register or preferences checkboxes that you want to view adult content, etc. Social media already has been doing this for decades. 

[Tommy James]

3 years later and the complaints are growing. Please forward our latest complaints as well. Also, the "correct answer" that is auto chosen for this thread is not the correct answer. As you can see by the thread, many of the replys have far more likes and comments debunking the "correct answer". The terms of service that is mentioned in it are not being violated as many are saying here and have provided reference photos as proof. 

[daniellei4510]

I'm actually seeing even more examples where I get violations that I shouldn't be getting. As in, more so than in the beginning. This suggests, possibly, that the programmers might be doing some tweaking to see what sticks, based on examples being submitted. Let's hope. More often than not, I can make things work by changing the shape of my selection in the meantime. 

[Gianni Trieste]

Adults do not need supervision, only children.

[Dario de Judicibus]

I agree

Dario de Judicibus
Scrittore, Roma (Italia)

[Gene5FBC]

If there's too much "skin" in your photo, it doesn't meet community standards. Photoshop hates cleavage.

[Rainybeet]

"Adobe is widely used in educational and business settings. They've made a choice to prevent misuse/abuse and train on licensed models to prevent liability."

Adobe is also used by artists and for artistic expression. Adobe needs to find a way to address these problems while also not restricting the artistic expression of their customers. They could include these restrictions for the Education Edition only, for instance.

Under their guidelines Birth of Venus, David, (Heck, the list of unsuitable Michaelangelo, DaVinci, and Botacelli paintings would be too numerous to write), Garden of Earthly Delights, Mother and Child, Lady Godiva, Explosion For Sale, a majority of anti-war art, a huge number of Adam and Eve portrayals, and countless works by artists such as Picasso, Manet, and Degas. Numerous outcries have been raised when schools take material that they deem offensive out of their libraries, but it is OK for Adobe to extend the ban on offensive material to millions of adult artists? They are not limiting a certain type of offensive or illegal material, such as child pornography, they are creating blanket restrictions on the words used to describe art. The Adobe restrictions are the most severe restrictions on material I have ever witnessed in the US, including things that were long ago abandoned, such as the Comics Code and the Hays Code, which were much more forgiving in the 1950s and 1930s than the Adobe restrictions are. They are a private company, and they can ban whatever they want, but their primary paying customers are adults that use the programs for artistic expression in one way or another, whether it is illustration, graphic design, video editing and creation, photography, etc. There are other companies that are doing it better, cheaper, and without the restrictions.

I love Photoshop. I use Photoshop for thousands of hours every year and it is an integral part of my workflow. They are dedicating tons of resources into trying to get ontop of the Generative AI market, yet they are making decisions about it that are bad for business and frankly offensive while still being behind in things like being able to follow prompts, generate appropriate content based on the prompts, and the overall quality of the results and features available for working with existing images. They are even falling down on the customer service. When you have offended customers, or unhappy customers in general, you do not answer their grievances by pointing back to the "terms of use" that the user has a grievance with to begin with.

I have praised and defended the AI in Photoshop for use in streamlining the workflow countless times in the past, but I feel that I cannot do that in good conscience for a company that is behaving so blatantly offensively. They are censoring what users can use in the art they create in Photoshop. They have the right to do it, but it is still horribly offensive. Religious groups (or any groups) have the right to hate whoever they want to hate, but it is still offensive and does not need to be tollerated by other people who disagree with them. To me, censorship of other peoples work, even if it is created using your product, is much more offensive than a nude body, blood, or violence are when used for expression. Winsor & Newton may as well be having people fill out questionaires to determine if what you are going to paint is acceptable enough to them for you to be allowed to use their paint.