Updates to issues encountered while generating images (User Guidelines Violations)

[Pete.Green]

Hello Photoshop community!

If you've used Generative Fill and Generative Expand, it's possible you've seen this dialog:

On November 7th 2023, the filters were adjusted to be less overly-sensitive, and we're still working to find the right balance here. If you continue to encounter issues after 11/7, please let us know in this thread!

Also, within this notice dialog, there is an opportunity to provide feedback to the team and request a review of the content. Please continue to use the feedback option to help us make improvements to this experience.

Thank you!

[Tommy James]

It is still overly sensitive. Anything close to skin or "too much skin" is blocked. Bathing suits are constantly an issue if anywhere in the photo. Any photographers or photo editing professionals who work with professional models can't use this feature. As you can see, family vacation photos of clients who want things edited or even people removed constantly get blocked. Adobe is highly advanced and I am positive it can train it's AI to be better than this.

[Terry38733705irr4]

I absolutely continue to get this error, and am surprised to see I am not the only one.   A fashion shoot or style shoot that meets all guidelines for posting on social media are still generating these errors.

I would absolutely understand the desire to provide guidelines on prompt generation, but if I am simply filling in the corners of an image, this screening is rather concerning.  I am paying for a product from a company that declared at Adobe Max that this is the age of controls - so not having these controls is concerning.

At the minimum - some kind of feedback from the product as to WHY it triggered a warning would be helpful.

[CSI Productions]

Test this on a dupe of your original:

I've been having some success by duplicating the image, cover the "offending" part of the image (just paint over it so it's hidden). Use this image to GenFill/Expand etc. Then copy/paste this on a layer "under" the original image (be sure you enlarge the original if you used Gen-Expand so the two dimensions match), display the original at 50% opacity so you can see the area to paint out and using your eraser tool (soft brish), erase the original to reveal the revised areas. Display the upper layer at 100% then flatten the image. Won't help with the model in a swimsuit directly but can be used to add remove or gen-expand stuff around the model.

[Tommy James]

Yeah. That works with the area around for expansion as you said, but if you need to correct anything inside the area it is useless. With as much as we pay for service, we should not be having to do a workaround to get the product to work. It was created to help speed up workflow and us having to do all this to get it to work slows down workflow

[jrsigerson]

If Adobe would just tell us what the guidelines are, I think a lot of pain could be avoided. And I don't mean linking to the page that "View Guidelines" opens, that's clearly nonsense, and has never been updated. Why does it have to be secret?

What set off alarm bells in the image linked? The pink T shape is the selection, prompt is simply "mallet"

I have 2 Creative Cloud All Apps seats and now I have to pay for a separate online AI image account as well, because Photoshop's miraculous new flagship feature fails more often than it works.

If Adobe can't or won't loosen up the filter, please, at least tell us what it's filtering.

[tonya20624874]

I'm looking for a good online Ai service. Which one are you using?

Thanks

[MatrDatr]

Stable Diffusion - its free,
mallet is a weapon and it appeared as an attempt to create a see-thru version exposing the womean bxxbs, lol, just kidding I have no idea, it is hit or miss for me if my prompt will be acceptable but that is only part of the issue. Next is the results don't match the surroundings, are childish looking and cartoon like, the AI doesn't pay much attention to my prompt.  Then I have to create a reference image which at times is also blocked. If I am lucky enough I get usable content but it sure isn't a time saver. At this point I try to avoid using gen-fll as much as possible because it works so poorly. The censorship on this forum gives me a good idea of the thinking at Adobe. I dont believe it it will ever be loosened up. There is no evidience it will and no one from Adobe is saying Oh MY Goodness, it is wrong, we are so sorry and we are working like crazy to get it fixed. To them it is a non-issue and all you people trying to violate the TOS should go use something else. Then we could all be happy.

[WILLIAM21960591m0al]

I am already using other software....when I tried to expand a photo of my daughter at her birthday party......guideline violation.....that was it for me.

Adobe executives......... remember Kodak...........

"It's monopoly disease," business historian John Steele Gordon told ABC News in January 2012. "Whenever you have a monopoly, you get fat, dumb, lazy, and un-innovative."

Read More: https://www.slashgear.com/1386360/whatever-happened-to-kodak-explained/

[tonya20624874]

Which one are you using now? I'm ready to move on from adobe at this
point.

[Cant find a name]

I am getting this message every time I try to generate a new background regardless of what was asked for. The function for me is currently completely useless.

[tonya20624874]

This just started happening to me too. With both backgrounds and ai
expad.

[ophelia5F91]

Generative expand expand is saying it encountered an issue - same as the thread title, I'm using latest mac os, latest PS downloaded today. the machine is a maxed out m4 max, expand was working yesterday fine, but simply doesnt today. super simple extensions needed... for product shots please fix this issue asap! this is impacting payed work! 

[Tommy James]

@Pete.Green are you guys even checking these anymore? There are numerous threads on this issue and more and more complaints growing. Why are we not seeing updates regarding these issues and concerns?

[aostang]

I can't believe we're now into 2025 and this is still such a major issue without resolve. I am still constantly fighting with any image that even remotely contains skin below the head. Hands even trigger the error. I've just had it at this point after submitting feedback including images for over a year now and it only seems to get worse, not better. I'm starting to look elsewhere for an image editing solution and going to use local generative fill instead. Unreal that this is the stance that Adobe has taken.

[Tommy James]

Yup. My count of submitted feedback for blocked images is now up to 165. I include the number in every report I send. At this point, we can only assume that Adobe either doesn’t care that their product is broken or that this is the quality they’re willing to accept. I’ve spoken with multiple Adobe employees who have escalated complaints to different departments, yet Adobe has still not addressed the issue or informed us if they are working on it.

[tonya20624874]

I've actually lost count. I also don't believe they're doing anything at
all.

[ephotographic group]

I'm to the same thinking. As a swimwear and activewear photographer in
Florida. Adobe has made it nearly impossible for me to do my job. I keep
hoping that they get it together. Doesn't make since to pay for a service I
can no longer use.

[tonya20624874]

Are you guys screwing with us?   
A heck of a lot of us have been complaining, and sending feedback plus images for two years now.  It  hasn't gotten better. Only worse.  At this point. Any image show skin on a female is 'violating community guidelines'.  Regardless of what skin or how much.  It's ridiculous.  
Even male subjects are setting off the babysitting program.  I have a male in jeans with suspenders. No shirt.  It not only sets off the censors. It won't allow generative expand to work either. 
In fact. I haven't been able to use generative expand for at least six months now. Regardless of the image.  

This nonsense must stop.   Turn off the community guidelines. Or seriously restrict what is in your 'community guidelines'.  Perhaps this would be fine in a restrictive country like Iran or Iraq.  But in the western world. I can't even use it for a cheeerleading team.  It's crazy.  

[aostang]

I gave up. I set up free local tools for photo and video that actually work better than Adobe's offerings, including AI fill. I canceled my subscription and I won't be back. After how long this has been broken and unusable, I suggest you look into the same. You'll be surprised what the free offerings can do and not be at the mercy of a company that has completely lost touch with its customer base.

[albertos26686010]

I think I will also look for an alternative solution. It's been a month that I keep getting this error, and I'm losing work, time, and money. Yet ADOBE keeps asking for and receiving payments regularly... they don't fix anything and just squeeze you dry. This is extremely frustrating.

[albertos26686010]

I think I will look for an alternative solution. It's been a month that I keep getting this error, and I'm losing work, time, and money. Yet ADOBE keeps asking for and receiving payments regularly... they don't fix anything and just squeeze you dry. This is extremely frustrating.

[Xenohart]

First: we're artists. The topics we will cover are literally infinite. That said, Adobe doesn't make products for artists. They make products for profit and want to avoid bad PR, even if it means destroying their own profit because, somehow, that makes sense in 2025. Second: I have 0% doubt, Adobe, on top of the overwhelming cost of its subscription models, is still trying to figure out when and how to charge us for ANY AI generation, whether in our own photos or as a single source. They're decades behind Midjourney and Dall-E, but you can bet - they'll keep announcing all sorts of new "upgrades"... and those will be add-on programs that cost more money. After all, Adobe used to be, a long, long time ago, "the" font go-to standard, only now to be the program that's tried to lock down as many fonts as humanly possible and then charge you for every single one of them (or a subscription service). They are nickel and diming us. Finally: The problem with the generative AI blocks is that Adobe's never going to "please" any woke agenda because the goal posts constantly shift. Sure, they could be the first corporation to drop that nonsense and actually serve all the artists and corner the market forever. But, hey: those who blindly support AI with an agenda, will find out that the users are tired of this nonsense and starting to develop their own software - and the replacement software will not only be good - it will be better than anything Adobe has... and they will try to quickly buy it out - but the artists won't be there for the money - they'll be there because they care - and that will see this program fall (and I can say this first hand as I do a LOT of consulting and software testing for people and I know what they're working on ... albeit, they're probably a year out from completion). It's too bad we can't get past short-sighted greed and corporate politics to what Adobe should be: a tool for artists. [edited for accuracy in verbiage and grammar]

[Burkhard Pook]

Es passiert laufend das die Bearbeitung mit generativer Erweiterung  von Fotos nicht funktiort. Offensicht ist die AI von Adobe falsch progammiert. Nicht nur das eine Foto mit "zu viel nackter Haut"  beanstandet wird, nein, auch ein vollkommen bekleidetes Model wird nicht akzeptiert. 

[Xenohart]

Thank you @Burkhard Pook . I don't know if you're using Adobe in America or another country, but it seems that Adobe has universally become a problem. Their AI "restrictions" are nonsensical. I viewed your photos and I think that is a perfect example of what has gone wrong with AI. For decades, professional magazines have photoshopped their images until it is now a standard. But, if you can NO LONGER taken fashion photography, without even crossing any "potential" border of "adult" only content, and use it with Adobe, then what is the point of even having Adobe? Sure, we can still edit our photos the way we always used to, pixel by pixel, but that defeats the point of AI and Adobe's upcharge for AI as an "added value service". At this point, Adobe owes ALL of us an apology and a refund. Unfortunately, they are on Instagram, Youtube, and Tik Tok and other social media platforms paying influencers to push their product because they are looking for more subscribers (apparently, having an excess of 37 MILLION USERS at an average of $25 a month, for a grand total of approximately ONE BILLION DOLLARS A MONTH, is NOT ENOUGH to fill their greed). What we really need (and I am suggesting this to EVERY USER ON HERE ... to share with everyone else, on EVERY social media platform), is to get the large corporations that are dependent on Adobe's software, to stand with us, and pick a 3 month window where we all cancel the service. That will be a $3 billion loss. And, it will motivate private developers to speed up their production of a replacement software. However, it will take all of us sharing and reposting this on every forum (Reddit, Telegram, Quora, Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, etc.), and uniting. Steve Jobs said it best: "Many companies forget what it means to make great products. After initial success, sales and marketing people take over and the product people eventually make their way out.”

[M-H]

Adobe's upcharge for AI as an "added value service"

By @Xenohart

Are you having to pay anything extra for Adobe AI? I'm guessing I have to be lucky as it just comes free with my subscription...
There are other free AI image models out there with much less or pretty much no restrictions at all, the only difference is they dont have community forums like this one where uses can complain about the free servive they are getting and demanding that free service to adjusted to their personal needs...