In danger of eroding the foundations: SaaS and AI

As a long-time user of Adobe software, Explore Communications took some time to get its head around Creative Suite moving to a subscription model (more than 10 years ago!).

We soon realised it was a good thing. We had been buying the gargantuanly-priced software package, knowing that it started becoming obsolete from the moment we installed it. Now we have access to applications and features that are constantly updated, albeit with little control on how and when we spend our money on the software.

What is happening, however, is that the foundations of the software industry and intellectual property are being eroded — and that erosion is accelerating thanks to the widespread adoption of generative AI.

When we purchased boxed software and ran the instal discs, the first step was to agree to the terms and conditions of use. Sure, most of us just scrolled to the end of the document and clicked ‘accept’, but the point is that these terms were fixed at the time the software was released and stayed in place until we chose to upgrade.

With a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, that’s no longer the case and, as a result, we need to be far more vigilant about the changes that are taking place with these terms of service (TOS). While we have largely lost autonomy in how we consume software, we are in danger of losing control over the content and IP we are generating when we use those applications – and that’s not on.

If it’s not enough for the social media giants to ‘own’ all the content we post on their platforms, now we have the likes of Adobe looking to do the same to feed their AI models by updating its TOS to include that “we may access your content through both automated and manual methods”. (See further in The Verge: ‘Adobe’s new terms of service aren’t the problem — it’s the trust‘.)

It used to be that the software industry was focused on creating the features and functionality that businesses and users either wanted or needed — and there was a clear distinction between this and the work and output we generated using these applications.

Those borders no longer seem to be in place – and it’s critical we re-establish them.

* Pictured above: Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 04 November 2006. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.