As I write this article, Phoblographer’s Managing Editor Nilofer Khan told me about how her friend just lost her job to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Fueled by insane amounts of hyper-capitalistic goals that are ultimately tearing our planet apart as we’re all fighting for resources, it’s been causing our society a ton of problems. Yet at the same time, Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen is stepping down because of falling shares affecting infinitesimal percentages in the multi-billions. The reason that’s being blamed is because photographers and other artists (not creatives, call them artists because we respect them) are leaving Adobe because of AI — the one thing that Adobe is leaning so insanely hard into.
This news comes via Reuters and it has sent Adobe’s stocks falling. The company’s profits are somewhere in the billions and even with falling stocks, are still somewhere in the billions.
What the press isn’t really saying is that this is kind of an odd reason to step down. Adobe is still a multi-billion dollar company and they haven’t been listening to their customers when they’ve been very directly telling Adobe what they want. Instead, Adobe has been raising prices, not allowing artists to keep their products, and implementing more and more generative AI features into their software.
Essentially, Adobe is providing photographers and other artists with tools to replace themselves while taking no responsibility. What’s worse is that they’re making us pay to teach Adobe how to replace themselves.
At first, the subscription model seemed fair because of all the updates and maintenance. But then the enshitification came. What am I talking about?
Lightroom became slower.
Lightroom had an identity crisis and became Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom for the Web, etc.
Lightroom became Photoshop in some ways.
Adobe Camera RAW became Photoshop in some ways.
Bridge was more or less ignored.
Adobe stopped referring to photographers as who they are and instead started calling them creators. It’s similar to my calling Adobe Lightroom just a subscription service when in reality, it’s way more than that.
To the next CEO of Adobe, I hope you listen and interpret in plain language what they’re saying. Here’s a list of things to consider:
- Standalone software options: Let photographers own their software and not have to pay for constant upgrades.
- Offer options of your software that don’t have AI built in at all.
- Offline editing should be allowed and give holistic support
- Offer options that don’t involve the creative cloud at all
- Lower your fees.
- Notice how not once in this article did I say that Adobe has a community. Community is a situation where everyone does their share to help each other. What Adobe has isn’t a community, it’s a customer base.
- If Adobe really wanted community, they’d work on reviving Behance.
- Actually, give back to your customer base in meaningful ways. I remember several years ago here in NYC, an Adobe Product Manager was trying to fundraise on behalf of Adobe for a Pride Parade. I don’t understand how a multi-billion dollar company needs to fundraise for a group of people who use their products. And why that company can’t just give them money instead.
Adobe makes over $6 billion in profits. Can a billion dollars not be given back to artists?