Continued Frustration with "too many similars"

[daniellei4510]

Below are the assets that have been rejected over the past 5 days for being too similar. The baby was initially rejected for quality issues, which I fixed, and it was then rejected as too similar to other assets. The standard refusal text reads, “We can't accept more than three color variations of the same image or similar images.” That does not apply here. And, “Models must appear in different situations or with different expressions to be considered.” I believe this actually applies to photographers who are submitting images of the same model, but these clearly are not images of the same model. The hamster, for example, bears little resemblance to the purple cabbage lady. 😉 (Sorry, I'm trying to find some humor in this, as my level of frustration has reached its peak.) I don't even want to talk about what this is doing to my acceptance to rejection percentages.



The following three assets were accepted. I'm not sure how they differ from the portrait assets above, and one is black and white, despite the consensus that submitting black and white assets should be avoided.



And here are recently accepted assets, even though there are already millions of wallpapers and backgrounds on Adobe Stock and should therefore not be submitted, as they are likely to be rejected.



I'm now to the point where I really don't know what to submit and what not to submit going forward. Although I'm apparently safe with black and white images and wallpapers.

Any thoughts as to what might be going on here?

[Jill_C]

Indeed, it is frustrating and there doesn't seem to be any logical answer. I had 9 out of 10 images rejected a couple of days ago for quality issues, and I can't find anything wrong with them. This has never happened to me before - my acceptance rate was high for a long time, but now it seems to be plunging... It feels like Adobe is trying to clear the queue by just instructing the Moderators to keep hitting the reject button. 

[daniellei4510]

"It feels like Adobe is trying to clear the queue by just instructing the Moderators to keep hitting the reject button."

You would think. Except that Facebook pages for Adobe Contributors are sometimes littered with screenshots of daily update emails from Adobe showing examples like, "289 accepted, 9 rejected." I came across another one recently showing over 800 accepted and a handful rejected. And I'd be willing to bet that the assets in question are all very similar to each other. No proof, but still. Something in the moderation process is broken.

[Ivan28999453u1a1]

Something definitely went wrong with moderation , like 10 days ago ...

Yes, we are all now facing a higher rate of rejections because of "too similar images" and from my point of view , after reviewing all images I even try to separately check with Adobe tool "similar image" and I upload a few images which got rejected ... NONE , none of those images have similar in database , not even have something to offer similar, 0 results.

So , something definitely went completely wrong. Maybe they use new AI moderation for now or human moderators went angry after boss critique and started hitting button rejection like crazy ...

Is there an Adobe employee here ? It is a good time to stop by and look at this issue ... 😅

[daniellei4510]

I still think moderation is being done by humans, but I also believe it's possible an algorithm was added that incorrectly flags the moderators indicating to them that the assets in questions MIGHT be similar to others, and it is the moderators prerogative to reject or approve. But that's just a wild guess on my part.

[Ivan28999453u1a1]

[MODERATOR MERGED WITH 'TOO MANY SIMILARS' TOPIC]

As I saw a dozen of questions in the last few weeks here, it seems I'm not only one.

 I'm quite sure now that something went completely wrong with the new system of moderation.

Is it an AI moderation tool or very angry-frustrated moderators, God knows But it started to affect everyone here and doesn't matter if you submit AI or non-Ai assets.

 If this continues like this, many contributors will lose eventually their account because high volume of image rejections which can't be anymore understand reasons of rejection(s)  Please share here your observation what triggered your rejection or what type of asset got rejected.

Mine observation about this issue and pretty weird rejection(s), some of those images Do NOT have any similar images(s) in Adobe database. I used Adobe tools for similar images, so it's a completely confusing situation....

What you saw strange or confusing about your rejection(s) in the tab bar ?

Thanks.

ps. I paused submissions on this platform. I hope some official's will come here soon and take a good look at this.

[Nancy OShea]

[MODERATOR MERGED WITH 'TOO MANY SIMILARS' TOPIC]

...contributors will lose their account because high volume of image rejections...

By Ivan28999453u1a1

===========

That's unlikely.  Rejections alone don't result in terminated accounts.

But violating the TERMS of AGREEMENT will cause you to lose the account.

[daniellei4510]

Email contributor support. You'll get a copperplate response, but I suspect complaints are still being read. If they receive enough complaints, they might look into the issue. 

[Ivan28999453u1a1]

you mean from "not accepted" section ?

edit:

BTW

contact page is broken , it leaves blank page if you try to use contact form ...

Is this means they had enough of complaints ?😆

[daniellei4510]

Yes, and marked as similar to other submissions (portraits). Four more today, as many as what were accepted, which were all abstract backgrounds.

[Jill_C]

Why would Moderators be angry and frustrated?

[Ivan28999453u1a1]

Because there are always some bosses who pressure them about quality, guessing 😅

[Abambo]

Because there are always some bosses who pressure them about quality, guessing 😅

By Ivan28999453u1a1

Moderators are accepting millions of assets each day. I don't think that your 20 refusals will make any impact.

[Abambo]

It feels like Adobe is trying to clear the queue by just instructing the Moderators to keep hitting the reject button. 

By Jill_C

They can do so by script... 

This looks more like frustrated moderators...

[Lari T.]

I have had the same thing happen to my images. Submitted 20 images, and had 100% rejection rate. Reasons given: quality and similarity. My quality is the same as you have, I can't find anything wrong with them. It's super frustrating. I worked hard on creating those images, and if the end result is that nothing is accepted, and there is no clear indication what to fix, then what's the point in submitting? Adobe needs a better system for this.

[Nancy OShea]

Just thinking out loud. 

1. Adobe may be attempting to cut costs by reducing inventory.  Storing data costs money.

2. They may be testing a new evaluation algorithm.  If an image contains X out of N criteria, it's flagged as too similar to other inventory.

3. Stock customers can generate their own image variations now with the recent addition of Firefly.

[daniellei4510]

As for your first theory, they could start here to free up space. 🙂

https://stock.adobe.com/ro/search?creator_id=202391500&filters%5Bcontent_type%3Aphoto%5D=1&filters%5...

[Nancy OShea]

Agreed.  The purge of similar assets is overdue. 

[tsg89005837]

I have to say, that one upsets me, greatly. I hired a model, drove out to the middle of nowhere to a ranch, photographed an old cowboy behind a fence leaning forward on it showing chest up in front of a little bit of blue sky showing, standing in front of it with a lasso and a lot of blue sky and then just in the open with no fence sitting in the back of an old truck with a sunset in the background and they were rejected for being too similar to a headshot of the cowboy (I assume, as it's the only one that was accepted). I actually spent time and money on it and this guy gets away with those???? That is beyond frustrating! They really need to fix this system.

[daniellei4510]

The "too many similars" issue is not necessarily related to your own assets being similar, but similar to everything presently available on Adobe Stock. Although that had never made much sense to me, either, since I can't imagine a moderator having the entire database stored in their brain. So I assume the images are being flagged as similar and the moderator therefore rejects the asset. I assume. We really don't how how the process works, but this issue is especially mysterious and frustrating.

[thibaultr20691496]

Yet it says:

Unfortunately, our review reveals that it is very similar to another image you have already uploaded, so we cannot accept it into our collection.

I have files rejected for similarities that only return 8000 files in the Adobe database, while I have "beach" files present in the millions that are still accepted.

[Ivan28999453u1a1]

Agree on this ... it's not about visual similarities , something  else triggers rejection button.

[Abambo]

1) storage is cheep. They won't save a lot by doing that.

2) may be.

3) ?

I would add: frustrated moderators trying to catch up.

[Ricky336]

Storage however needs power to run the servers, which costs money.

[Abambo]

Still, storage is cheap, even with the power need. What really costs money is searching for the right asset. But that is a cost faxctor for the Adobe customers.