Long Delay in Review of Stock Images

[Youssef Saad]

Can anyone tell me why the images I submit for review on Adobe Stock take a very very long time? 

[davescm]

Hi , I've moved your post from the Photoshop forum to the Stock Contributors forum where you are more likely to get answers relevant to your question.

Dave

[daniellei4510]

A large number of contributors are waiting 2 to 3 months for their assets to be reviewed. Your only option at this time is to continue being patient.

[Nancy OShea]

1. Review times can vary from 1 - 3 months depending on the season & how many other assets are ahead of yours in the wait queue.

2. Stock receives thousands of submissions per week.  They have a limited number of Reviewers available to examine them all.

3. Be patient & work on other projects. Everyone must wait their turn.

[Jill_C]

Many of us are experiencing long delays in content moderation, and no one knows why. We can only speculate that there are perhaps fewer moderators on staff now, or Adobe continues to receive a flood of submissions, or some combination of reasons. I do know that they are adding between 500,000 and 1,000,000 assets to the database every day.

[Vince_NT]

It has gotten really slow in the past few months in my experience as well - used to take a few days, then weeks and now months for approval. I'd wager a guess that they are being flooded with AI generated content given how lenient they are compared to the other major platforms who strictly ban AI submissions. Kinda sad really as Adobe Stock used to be the best, now it looks like polluted AI wasteland.

[Antony-Solo76]

I totally agree with your opinion, and I hope one day or maybe soon AdobeStock changes their policy by issuing a strict ban on submitting AI images or remove all AI Images on their data base like other platforms. Because in my opinion AI images are like garbage that is scattered everywhere right now, please check on Social media, even almost all digital media today looks like garbage that forces the eyes, AI images are really not beautiful at all.

[daniellei4510]

That ain't gonna happen. Granted, there are garbage AI assets scattered about but I think things have improved from nearly two years ago when Adobe began accepting AI. And I believe things will improve even more going forward.

[Jill_C]

Adobe is "all-in" on AI, incorporating it into their products and giving users more opportunities to use AI features to enhance their images. They're prioritizing the acquisition of AI and are adding hundreds of thousands of new AI assets to the database every week. I agree that there are a lot of low-quality AI images in the database, but there are also many useable, beautiful and perfectly rendered images and Buyers are licensing them; otherwise Adobe wouldn't continue to push their Moderators to get them approved and into the database right away.

[Nancy OShea]

...in my opinion AI images are like garbage that is scattered everywhere right now, ...AI images are really not beautiful at all.

By @Antony-Solo76

==========

The same things were said about modern Pop and Digital art movements. They were pooh-poohed initially, and eventually gained mainstream acceptance. One person's trash is another's treasure.

[Vince_NT]

Interesting how my initial comment has opened up much discussion, so may as well chime in 🙂

Adobe is riding along the generative AI hype train, just like all the tech companies, so I don't think they'll change their stance on AI content anytime soon. They are also pushing their own Firefly generative model out to customers, so it makes sense they want to normalise and even popularise the use of such content. To be fair, the technology has improved significantly in such a short amount of time, so the mix of 'AI garbage' and 'usable AI content' will get better soon enough, arguably already so. Nonetheless, AI generated imagery still has that distinctive plasticky, heavy digital airbushed look that may or may not work depending on the use case. I personally cringe whenever I see those content but I also do see a lot of perfectly fine use cases for them, working in the creative industry myself. 

As for the value of AI imagery, or any art in general, well anyone's opinion is as valid as the next person's. Price has little to do with intrinsic value here, only 'perceived' value. Van Gogh died in poverty, NFTs are mostly worthless now, and some 'experts' are looking a sell a duct-taped banana for over a million - it's all perspectives 😉 

As a stock contributor though, I'm actually seeing my earnings from Adobe lagging two other major platforms that strictly ban AI content. It used to be the other way around, thanks to Adobe's much superior royalty rates (and I still love Adobe for that) but also very good number of downloads. But recently I'm getting more from the other two, both in volumes and total earnings, while keeping my portfolio relatively the same across all platforms. Possibly a trend going on there? Time will tell. But it also helps that the assets I submited were approved on the other platforms within a week or so, while they are still stuck under review as of now at Adobe....after 3 months.

[daniellei4510]

Here's what I believe is the problem and how it might be fixed. There seems to be at least anecdotal evidence that people submitting AI are submitting hundreds of assets at a time, and having those same hundreds of assets accepted within a day or two. In the end, it shouldn't really matter how many assets are submitted, but how many are moderated by a single contributor per day.