Adobe is an established player with real customers who don't want to deal with copyright issues. Telling them "this is safe to use because we paid for it" solves that issue.
With Uber, no one's suing individual riders or drivers over an illegal taxi ride.
i was at adobe summit a couple weeks back, the push was ai heavy— the strategy is 100% around no copyright issues.
observationally they’re in an interesting position, balancing their artistic clients and their executive clients. a clean model is the easiest way to hedge their portfolio and reputation.
Artist don't want their work taken for free. And executive clients can know that court systems can be extremely fickle... It can go one way or an other depending jurisdiction and even one big enough going wrong can be expensive.
The Artists it was trained on already signed rights away to Adobe when they put their work for sale on Adobe Stock so they’ll get what they’re given really.
This is such a tectonic shift for what the concept of media even means that any assumptions are on uncertain ground.
The courts could find that it isn't possible to sign away these rights. There are many other rights that the law does not permit to be signed away for much more tame reasons than "enables further creations of 'your' work (or in the case of actors, literally 'you') not only without your actual involvement, but even long after your death". I would expect that it at least comes with a time limit. "Artists can sign a license to use these rights but only until their death + 10 years, after that the licensee can't use anything trained on their work. Artists also have an unrevokable right to cancel the license at any time with 90 day notice." might be one possible outcome.
That seems like a crazy stretch to me. Not a lawyer but the rights courts typically don’t let you sign away are things like your freedom. Signing away your right to profit or control a video you created is super common already.
Content licensing is really well established and already allows for licensing for specific use and different royalty structures based on usage. An example of this is streaming vs theater vs syndication.
So, now there is a new venue to take into account and have the lawyers add a few pages to their contracts moving forward.
>courts typically don’t let you sign away are things like your freedom.
This is exactly my point. An AI that can replace you, personally, is closer to signing away your identity or freedom than the rights to display a specific already completed work.
The court telling an artist they're not allowed to sell their videos to the highest bidder seems like a greater infringement on their freedom. What if no one wants to pay for this person's videos except for an AI company? You're basically telling them they're not allowed to profit off of their work.
With Uber, no one's suing individual riders or drivers over an illegal taxi ride.