Content analysis FAQ

Overview 

Adobe may analyze your Creative Cloud or Document Cloud content to provide product features and improve and develop our products and services. Creative Cloud and Document Cloud content include but aren't limited to image, audio, video, text or document files, and associated data. Adobe performs content analysis only on content processed or stored on Adobe's servers; we don't analyze content processed or stored locally on your device.

Let's say that you access Creative Cloud or Document Cloud via a personal account and prefer that Adobe doesn't analyze your content to develop and improve our products and services. In that case, you may turn off content analysis at any time from your Adobe account (view details and exceptions later).

What techniques does Adobe use to analyze content?

Adobe primarily uses machine learning in Creative Cloud and Document Cloud to analyze your 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. The system may continue to learn and improve over time as it receives more data.

We use machine learning to develop and improve our products and services, enabling us to deliver innovative and cutting-edge solutions. We also use machine learning to provide product features and customize our products and services.

Machine learning-enabled features can help you become more efficient and creative. For example, we may use machine learning-enabled features to help you organize and edit your images more quickly and accurately. With object recognition in Lightroom, we can auto-tag photos of your dog or cat. In Photoshop, machine learning can be used to automatically correct the perspective of an image for you. With Liquid Mode in Acrobat, we optimize the readability of a PDF by, for example, automatically enhancing a document's headings and tables to help you more easily scroll through and read dense documents.

Machine learning-enabled features are also used to make context-aware suggestions. For example, Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop analyzes your image and predicts the correct content to insert in a selected area. And in Acrobat, we can still provide search suggestions despite misspelling a search term.

How does Adobe analyze your content?

Adobe may analyze your 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. If you don't want Adobe to use your content for these purposes, you can opt out of content analysis at any time (view details and exceptions described). Read more about how Adobe may analyze your content in Document Cloud 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 are 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 analyze your content in Document Cloud products and services? 

For Document Cloud products and services (including Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Acrobat Sign), Adobe may analyze the metadata (e.g., structural elements of a document, such as number of tables and headings) and document categories associated with your content, subject to a user’s content analysis setting described in the later section. This setting is not available to organization or school accounts, which are governed by your organization or school’s agreement with Adobe.

Adobe will not process the actual content of your document (e.g., text from the body of a document) for product improvement unless you provide opt-in consent (which will be separate from the content analysis setting described in the later section).

How will 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 them 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. 

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.

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 is not available to organization or school accounts, which are 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 don't want Adobe to analyze your content in the manner described, take the following steps:

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: This program allows you to submit the images you edit in Photoshop to help improve machine learning-based features. Learn more, including how to join or leave the program
• Adobe Stock: Content submitted by contributors to Adobe Stock 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 when you use those features to help improve that feature.