Content analysis at Adobe

Find answers to your questions about content analysis for digital media apps like Creative Cloud and Document Cloud.

Can I turn off (or opt out of) content analysis for product improvement and development?

You can turn off content analysis at any time if you're a customer accessing Creative Cloud and Document Cloud products and services via a personal account. (This setting doesn't apply to organization or school accounts governed by your organization or school’s agreement with Adobe.) Turning off content analysis doesn't affect your ability to use any features. 

If you prefer that Adobe doesn't analyze your content to develop and improve our products and services, you may turn off content analysis at any time by following these steps:

What techniques does Adobe use to analyze content?

Adobe primarily uses machine learning in Creative Cloud and Document Cloud to analyze content. Machine learning describes a subset of artificial intelligence in which a computing system uses algorithms to analyze and learn from data without human intervention to draw inferences from patterns and make predictions. Machine learning-enabled features can help you become more efficient and creative. The system may continue to learn and improve over time as it receives more data.

For Adobe Firefly, the first model is trained on Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content, and public domain content where the copyright has expired. You can find more information on Adobe Firefly in the Adobe Firefly FAQ.

How does Adobe analyze my content?

Adobe may analyze content that is processed or stored on Adobe servers. We don't analyze content processed or stored locally on your device. When we analyze your content for product improvement and development purposes, we first aggregate your content with other content and then use the aggregated content to train our algorithms and thus improve our products and services.

In limited circumstances, we may manually review your content for product improvement and development purposes in the following situations: 

• If you make such content public, for example: 
  • Contributions to Adobe Stock and Behance 
  • Content live-streamed with Adobe Live 
  • Content that you submit to be featured on Adobe Express
  • Content that you submit as tutorials in Lightroom
• If you participate in a prerelease, beta, or early access program
• If you submit such content for manual review or otherwise permit Adobe to manually review your content, for example:
  • You submit content through the Adobe Photoshop Improvement Program
  • You submit content through the Adobe Acrobat Improvement Program
  • You submit feedback and content to our engineering teams for feature development
• If we can use automated systems to remove all user-generated materials and identify features from your content before it's manually reviewed, for example: 
  • PDFs processed so that only structural elements, and not any text or images, are left 
  • Images processed so that only object masks remain

Our manual review process includes safeguards to help protect your privacy. If you submit non-public content for manual review, we will perform the manual review with personnel subject to confidentiality requirements and privacy training.

How does Adobe protect my privacy? 

Adobe takes your privacy seriously. Your privacy is maintained during content analysis for product improvement and development. None of your content is included in our products or services unless you make it public (for example, contributions to Adobe Stock and Behance). The insights obtained through content analysis will not be used to re-create your content or lead to identifying any personal information. 

You can find an overview of how Adobe may use your information (including content) in the Adobe Privacy Center. 

When does content analysis opt-out not apply?

Turning off content analysis doesn't affect our ability to analyze your content when you participate in programs where you proactively submit content to develop and improve our products and services. If you don't want your content to be used for such purposes, you should avoid participating in those programs, including but not limited to:

• Adobe Photoshop Improvement Program allows you to submit the images you edit in Photoshop to help improve machine learning-based features. Learn how to join or leave the program.
• Adobe Stock, where the content submitted by contributors may be used for machine learning.
• Certain features allow you to submit content as feedback.
• Certain beta, prerelease, or early access products or features.

Additionally, if you use features that rely on content analysis techniques (for example, Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop), your content may still be analyzed to help improve that feature.