Contributors cannot opt out of AI/ML training - How is this okay and/or legal?

Hi there, 

I can't tell if anyone's posted on here yet, but it came to my attention via LinkedIn that contributors are unable to opt out of ML/AI training for Firefly.

How is this okay and/or legal? 

#1 - Adobe Stock Contributors were never asked before their content was trained. Contributors have spent countless hours tagging their content to make it easier for buyers to purchase. These text-image pairs are the very thing that makes ML/AI training able to even occur.

#2 - Firefly competes directly against its source material in the market, and could not have existed without it in the first place. Generative AI now completely drowns out the source material it was trained on. For example in the Illustration Category alone, Generative AI accounts for  161,879,215 images of a total 196,553,835 images. Thats 82.4% Generative AI, and 17.6% actual contributors.

Can somebody at Adobe please explain WHY contributors are not allowed to opt out of training? How do we get this fixed?

These are illustrators, concept artists, etc, people with LIVELIHOODS whose work was taken without their consent to train a product that competes directly against them in the same marketplace.

I fully recognize that "the damage has already been done" (i.e. trained), but how but how do we protect future contributors? 

#3 - Adobe is actively promoting Firefly as an "ethical" and "commercially" safe solution. This does even account for the fact that Adobe has allowed and encouraged Generative AI to flood Adobe Stock (via Contributor Bonus Periods), and Adobe Stock is filled with images from Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc.

https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/firefly-faq-for-adobe-stock-contributors.html

I've been a loyal Adobe User for 13+ years now (and am also a Stock Contributor). I'm struggling with continuing my Adobe license, and I know I'm not the only one. The theft of the work that's been "normalized" through Adobe Stock submissions is the work of some my heroes (concept artists, people who have made the movies we love), and I recognize my part in contributing to this mess by paying a subscription and not trying to speak out.