Firefly<\/a>, which was marketed as a text-to-image generator that didn\u2019t steal work belonging to creatives. Carter quickly realized that the Diversity Photos archive was in Firefly\u2019s training data and reached out in June 2023, asking to exclude the photos from the dataset and requesting that the two parties establish a licensing arrangement for AI training. <\/p>\n\u201cI was met with months of non-answers,\u201d Carter says. \u201cThey told me there were \u2018pending decisions\u2019 and to be patient.\u201d In October 2023, Carter was told that the agreement he signed back in 2018 gives Adobe the right to use Diversity Photos as AI training data, confirming that they had used the dataset in at least two AI models, Adobe Sensei and Adobe Firefly. <\/p>\n
Carter points out that the entire value proposition of Diversity Photos is its scarcity, along with the quality of the content. If a tech company wants to use the archive to train an AI model, Carter will charge a perpetual license premium. <\/p>\n
\u2018Adobe did the exact opposite of what they told the public they were doing.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cSo when I found out that Adobe had fed our entire library into their AI training pipeline without asking, without a separate license, without any compensation \u2014 it was devastating,\u201d Carter says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t just use a few images. They ingested our content and used it to build products that now directly compete with us. Adobe\u2019s AI can now generate the same kind of diverse imagery that we spent years and significant resources creating. They took our competitive advantage and turned it into their feature.\u201d <\/p>\n
Carter says it \u201creally stung\u201d when he saw Adobe telling the world that it respected creators\u2019 rights, that it had permission to use the training data, and that contributors could opt out. <\/p>\n
\u201cNone of that was true in our case. We were never asked. We were never given an opt-out. We were never given a \u2018Do Not Train\u2019 option,\u201d Carter says. \u201cAdobe did the exact opposite of what they told the public they were doing.\u201d <\/p>\n
To underline just how seriously Carter takes obtaining the correct permissions and licences, he tells PetaPixel that he sent back a five-figure sum to Shutterstock in 2021 after the stock photo company wanted to use Diversity Photos\u2019 images to train its own AI model. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur content must be used for good and benefit our community,\u201d Carter explains. \u201cMany people have entrusted us with their likeness and their content \u2014 and we must fight for them and creators\u2019 rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arbitration <\/p>\n
After Adobe informed Carter that it had a right to train its AI with Diversity Photos, the company offered $1,173.93 as a bonus fee. <\/p>\n
\u201cNot compensation, not a licensing fee \u2014 a bonus,\u201d says Carter. \u201cAs if they were doing me a favor. And they made it clear they didn\u2019t even believe they were required to pay that under the agreement.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThis was for nearly 12,000 images used to train AI models that Adobe is now monetizing through subscription fees,\u201d he continues. \u201cI didn\u2019t accept it. I asked for it to be removed from my account because I did not want it to be perceived that we accepted that value at all.\u201d <\/p>\n
As well as licensing photos for editorial and commercial purposes, Diversity Photos also licenses its library for AI evaluation purposes, to test a dataset for unwanted biases in AI. A single one-year license can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Carter found that $1,173.93 to be an insulting number. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt showed a fundamental disrespect for the value of what we\u2019d created and the communities we represent,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gerald_Carter_Headshot-537x800.jpeg\")
Diversity Photos founder Gerald Carter<\/p>\n
But Adobe didn\u2019t budge. Calls and emails went unanswered; he says he was given the runaround. So in January 2024, Carter\u2019s attorney sent a formal demand letter. Adobe once again stated that the original agreement gave them the right to do whatever they wanted with the Diversity Photos archive. So Carter and his attorney filed for arbitration in June 2024. <\/p>\n
Carter says that the arbitration process, which is a way of resolving a private dispute with the help of a third party, was stacked against him from the beginning. <\/p>\n
The arbitration process is expensive, and the contract Carter signed with Adobe back in 2018 had a clause stating Adobe would cover the cost of arbitration on behalf of Carter if he couldn\u2019t afford it, which he couldn\u2019t. But Adobe allegedly refused to honor the terms of the agreement and instead offered to pay the arbitrators\u2019 fees to review Adobe\u2019s motion to dismiss all claims against it. The arbitrator agreed to the arrangement. <\/p>\n
Adobe then moved for a summary judgment on the case, which was fully granted except for one of Diversity Photos\u2019 claims: negligence. The negligence claim stated that Adobe put Diversity Photos\u2019 archive online without any watermarks or copyright management information. In doing so, other AI companies such as Midjourney, Stability AI, and Google were also able to train on the photo library without compensation. But even on that claim, Carter still didn\u2019t win. <\/p>\n
\u201cAdobe\u2019s strategy was to litigate every step. So, we had to file a second time to prove we cannot afford arbitration and that Adobe\u2019s terms say they will pay if we cannot afford it,\u201d Carter explains. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut to have that reviewed by the arbitrator cost $24,000. Essentially, we must pay to show we cannot afford the costs. We had no choice but to withdraw. So even though we wanted to continue pursuing our last remaining claim, we couldn\u2019t move forward because we could not afford the cost \u2014 this was economic exclusion from the legal process.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Diversity_Photos_Examples_0003.jpg\")
Diversity Photos<\/p>\n
Carter says Adobe weaponized the arbitration clauses in the original contract. \u201cA small business that represents marginalized communities was effectively denied its day in court \u2014 or even its day in arbitration \u2014 because we couldn\u2019t afford the toll booth,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Adobe allegedly made it clear that if the judge were to make the company pay for Carter\u2019s legal fees, it would pay them at the end of the process \u2014 meaning Carter would have to pay the costs upfront. <\/p>\n
Precedent <\/p>\n
Adobe has since moved to have the arbitration award confirmed in court as precedent for future cases. In November 2025, a \u201chostile\u201d process server arrived at Carter\u2019s home with a petition from Adobe to confirm the Contractual Arbitration Award. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe the arbitration process was fundamentally flawed,\u201d Carter says. \u201cThe arbitrator refused to address the cost issue that was contractually required before ruling on Adobe\u2019s motion to dismiss everything.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2018It showed a fundamental disrespect for the value of what we\u2019d created and the communities we represent.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cHe treated Adobe\u2019s unsubstantiated assertions as established facts without any discovery. No documents were ever exchanged between the parties.\u201d <\/p>\n
Carter frets that his experience will impact other creators since the judge in his ruling said, \u201cAI outputs cannot be proven to be the underlying copyrighted works.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has nothing to do with any of our claims so he ruled on something that doesn\u2019t pertain to our case but will be used and referenced against creators for decades,\u201d Carter adds. \u201cWe\u2019re asking the court to vacate the award on multiple grounds under California\u2019s arbitration statute.\u201d <\/p>\n
A Warning <\/p>\n
Back when Carter signed his agreement with Adobe in 2018, generative AI products didn\u2019t exist. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe contract I signed gave Adobe a license to use my images for \u2018developing new features and services [to promote my work],\u2019 Carter says. <\/p>\n
But while he assumed that wording was there for Adobe to improve its platform, the company assumed otherwise. <\/p>\n
\u201cAdobe\u2019s argument? The word \u2018new\u2019 means they can do anything new. Anything. Including something that didn\u2019t exist when I signed the contract. Including AI training. Including building a tool that directly competes with the very content I licensed to them,\u201d Carter says. <\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Diversity_Photos_Examples_0010.jpg\")
Diversity Photos <\/p>\n
Carter says his story is a warning to other creators signing \u201cstandard, non-negotiable, click-through contracts.\u201d The word new, he says, becomes a blank check.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re fighting to have this ruling vacated,\u201d he adds. \u201cNot just for Diversity Photos, but because if this interpretation stands, it sets a precedent that guts creator rights across the board. No contract from the pre-AI era should be interpreted as a blank check for AI training. The creators who signed those agreements never could have imagined this use, and the platforms know it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ultimately, AI has impacted Carter\u2019s business. He calls the rise of generative AI an industry-wide crisis for content creators in niche markets. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe irony is that our content is valuable precisely because it\u2019s hard to create \u2014 real people, real diversity, real consent,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cGenerative AI threatens to commoditize all of that. And the companies building these AI models are profiting from our work without compensating us.\u201d <\/p>\n
PetaPixel reached out to Adobe for comment but did not hear back as of publication.<\/p>\n
Image credits: Diversity Photos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gerald Carter The founder of an image archive called Diversity Photos is taking his fight with Adobe public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[2130,25597,62,51832,183254,208336,276,277,49,48,13699,208337,25600,208338,208339,208340,61,208341],"class_list":["post-531089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-adobe","tag-adobefirefly","tag-ai","tag-aimodel","tag-aitraining","tag-aitrainingdata","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-diversity","tag-diversityphotos","tag-generativeai","tag-niche","tag-photoarchive","tag-photolibrary","tag-technology","tag-trainingdata"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Gerald-Carter-800x420.jpg\")
Gerald Carter <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Diversity_Photos_Examples_0009.jpg\")
Diversity Photos<\/p>\n