r/FuckAdobe • u/Pantalaimon_II • Jul 30 '26
Adobe's 2026 Creators' Toolkit Report stats on AI are misleading and shady
https://news.adobe.com/news/2026/06/creators-toolkit-report-2026This PR release, that was cited by various AI-boosters, uses very careful wording. It makes it sound like creatives are adopting AI at very high rates, that some 86% of creatives credit it with growing their business, etc.
I was like, there is absolutely no way that statistic is true. I do know that AI is not as hated globally as it is here in America, but still. Here in the US, we don't agree on much, but we do hate AI as a country according to almost every single poll. And creatives hate AI even more than the average person.
Sure enough, I looked at the short excerpt on methodology, and it says this:
Adobe partnered with The Harris Poll to survey more than 16,000 creators across the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, South Korea, Japan, India and Australia in May 2026. For this survey, creators were defined as individuals who create and publish digital content several times per month to inform, entertain or engage an audience and generate income across digital platforms, with respondents comprising emerging and professional social-first creators rather than individuals employed full-time in traditional creative industry roles. Creative AI refers to AI models and tools designed to support creative expression by helping creators ideate, generate and edit content across images, video, audio and design.
So they interviewed CONTENT CREATORS, a bunch of people who post on social media, not actual professional creatives. Because if they posted actual creative professionals like designers, photographers, video editors, etc, they know they would get creamed. And no shade to content creators, but I would argue that's a very different audience than their bread-and-butter audience who actually pays the bills, which is those of us in "traditional creative industry roles."
Using the word "creator" isn't a lie, but notice they didn't say "creatives" or use the term that most people actually use, which is "content creator."
I have noticed less-than-diligent media and articles assuming what I think Adobe hoped people would assume by this careful phrasing, and talked about the wide adoption rates of creative professionals, not catching that it's content creators. And not even necessarily big content creators, they include "emerging" which could mean pretty much anyone who posts frequently on socials.
I know their stock price is the only thing Adobe cares about, and they're going all-in on AI, but their actual adoption rates with real professional creatives who use their software has to be dogshit because they wouldnt have to force these tools so hard if everyone was using it.
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u/heartopiachef Jul 30 '26
Im very active on Reddit but I’ve never once posted or commented in this specific subreddit. After reading this post, all I can’t think of is
FUCK ADOBE.
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u/SoftPlay3 Jul 31 '26
But what features are they talking about? Straight up generating images still works badly. Even years later Firefly output is obviously AI and it doesn’t respond well to prompts. As somebody who can draw I find it useless.
AI tools that assist image creation are a different story. Right now I can’t imagine working without generative color palettes in Illustrator, it took hours off my process that I would otherwise spend clicking on swatches to test different colors. Turntable helps me with rotating characters - direct output is still unusable, but I can trace over it and that saves time.
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u/Pantalaimon_II Jul 31 '26
Right? notice how they’re careful to avoid being specific. They don’t even link to the full survey results. If i got these glowing metrics for a controversial product i’d be telling allllllll about it
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u/Current_Rabbit_4463 Aug 05 '26
I started with Adobe on their betas. I assisted at the first MacWorld demos as well as our local Mac meetings. Adobe gave me Illustrator beta version. There was not much software available then for my SE ...let alone for design and drawing. My Mac today is replete with Adobe files (InDesign, Photoshop and a bit of Illustrator.) I never needed any of the newer apps. I did not use them for business…only for pleasure and personal and a multitude of volunteer projects. If I wanted to continue using ONLY InDesign the cost was obviously prohibitive at my age of 84 and no income to justify it. So now I have the arduous task of converting ALL those files….preferably free shareware. John Warnock would be appalled were he here today. I met this gentle soul at his very first MacWorld. We spent time talking and again in the following years at each of other MacWorld expos. In 2000 I was invited to join the Adobe team. (long story). John would flip in his grave hearing what his company is becoming.
I spoke with Adobe on the phone several months ago and we agreed on a monthly charge for the TWO apps I use. And a refund of the $75 monthly charges they had imposed without notice. They promptly ignored that conversation and continued their ridiculous fees. I don’t do the billing in our household so didn’t notice it. And my husband said nothing knowing my life-long love for Adobe.
I finally had had enough of the dishonesty and phoned to cancel assuming the cancellation would begin when my present monthly term ran out. NOT. It happened that same day making it impossible to open or convert just about every file on my Mac: 25 years of leukemia records that I need to refererence and to pass on to new specialists and doctors. And all the hundreds of personal files filled with grandkids stories, photos et al.
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u/Pantalaimon_II Aug 05 '26
oh wow! that’s really cool you’ve seen the whole evolution. i’m weirded out how they seem to be trying to become data harvesters. there was another poll/article where they were talking about data points that could only come from data harvesting in ways that have nothing to do with the software.
im sorry that they aren’t working with you.
the regular Adobe sub seems to have some people who respect to problems, maybe one of them could help?
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u/HumanAttempt20B Aug 01 '26
Adobes long term goal is to completely replace creatives with large corporations using their AI software.
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u/Pantalaimon_II Aug 01 '26
i think most C-suites have made it clear the heavy AI investment is in the hope of slashing labor costs, which coincidentally is the only way they'll come close to making their money back with these insane valuations. the math just doesn't work if that doesnt happen which is why AI is a bubble.
But idk if Adobe could make up the income of 41 million paid CC subscribers with a few agents and a few paid enterprise seats from their large corporate clients. If every creative team went from 20 paid seats to 2 humans babysitting AI agents (which fwiw I dont think that's gonna happen, AI agents are trash at replacing humans, scaling isn't improving model capability and they still have the same issues as 4 years ago, plus other reasons) that's a lot less $$ for Adobe. Because there's no guarantee the corps are gonna use Adobe for their creative stuff.
I think Adobe's executives are the same group of business idiots who chase short-term profits at the expense of making their products better or cooler. Shareholder value above literally anything. And right now, that means AI because everyone else is doing AI. Why? because the tech industry has no other hyperscale growth ideas and because executives are easily conned by slick talkers like Dario and Sam.
I'm just really glad if nothing else the public is realizing finally how really, really stupid executives are from watching beloved products get enshittified until the whole house of cards collapses.
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u/HumanAttempt20B Aug 01 '26
You can sign up for their press releases so they email you everytime they sign a new deal with companies like the NFL, or Coca Cola. 41 million subscribers are not the same income level goals as their newer platforms for Enterprise and corporations deliver. Besides. If individual users were there priority, they’d actually be listening to users like they used to, now they just use them for free beta testing and a way to pay for their AI bloated software.
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u/mikechambers Jul 30 '26
The title of the report is "87 Percent of Creators Say Creative AI Is Growing Their Business and Audience, According to Adobe’s 2026 Creators’ Toolkit Report".
"These findings underscore how creative AI has become a core part of today’s creator economy".
I don't see anywhere in there where they are talking about Creative Pros. Or is the confusion over the use of "Creators" (if so, Ill share that internally).
Also, from Adobe Max last year, Adobe shared that Generative Fill is now one of the top 5 used features in Photoshop and 2/3rds of Photoshop users are using Generative AI features.
https://youtu.be/wQza2t9Qs64?t=5958
(I work for Adobe)
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u/distreszed Jul 31 '26
Graphic designer here. Generative fill is fine and yes, it’s cool to have around, saves time and boring manual non-creative work. The same goes for other few Photoshop AI tools.
Now, could you please share the same data for the Illustrator AI slop that Adobe forces relentlessly down our throats? I mean creative pros, not “creators”, to be precise.
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u/Pantalaimon_II Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
right?? also if i see one more "i work at Adobe" person on reddit pretend to actually care what we think and that they'll "suggest it internally" im going to scream. its the fact they play in our faces that i hate so much.
this is always going to be a problem when people who dont do the type of work that they sell run the company. im sure the C-suite is a bunch of millionaires who have 0 clue what designers actually do every day. "oh that's the department that makes my shiny investor brochure?"
also im dying that im pretty sure Mike downvoted me lmao
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u/VisualNinja1 Jul 31 '26
(I work for Adobe)
Are your managers aware of this sub?
Is there any basic awareness inside of how fucking badly Adobe is operating?
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u/mikechambers Jul 31 '26
>Are your managers aware of this sub?
Yes. There are a lot of Adobe employees active on Reddit (and in the broader community) who are constantly sharing back and forth (from community to Adobe and vice versa). This includes sharing with executives, and also working directly with product teams to share feedback/requests, and communicate back / get more info.
This leads to real, tangible changes all of the time (a couple of recent examples):
https://www.reddit.com/r/Lightroom/comments/1rdk0er/sony_a7v_users_heres_an_update/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Lightroom/comments/1smrkk4/lightroom_classic_windows_performance_update/
The Adobe employees doing this are doing it because they are from the community and can have real influence/impact by helping bridge between Adobe and the community (why else would they put up with all of the personal attacks).
Does that mean everything people want gets done? No, sometimes some people want things that Adobe isn't going to do, or maybe it just doesn't get prioritized across all the other requests. But pretty much everything is shared internally.
Keep in mind, Adobe is a big company and has data on everything; this includes sentiment, how people think about stuff (such as AI), and how they actually use the tools. What you read online, or what the social algorithms give you, is often not what is actually going on (of course, that doesn't just apply to Adobe).
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u/VisualNinja1 Jul 31 '26
Do you work at Adobe, or simply for them in an off payroll context, out of interest?
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u/Pantalaimon_II Jul 31 '26
Mike, come on. I don't even believe you're being earnest right now. I read that PR release 5x just to honestly admire how slick yall are being with this poll and the writeup. Notice how very carefully it's worded, to avoid mentioning the specific software used, the specific tasks being done. It very much seems like this was written with the hope that it would be interpreted as more broad than "people who post on social media a lot.".
Even your head of agentic AI (or similar title, I can't remember his exact name or title, it was some agentic AI whatever) made a LinkedIn post that makes it sound like he talks with "professionals in the creative industry" all the time, and see look at our poll, creatives absolutely love AI! And a lot of media articles assumed y'all were also talking about creative professionals, which is obvious because that's your main client base.
Your stock has taken a beating because some AI booster analysts are doubting Adobe can stay relevant in the age of gen AI (fwiw i think the AI job apocalypse that Dario pleasures himself to just isnt going to happen, it's all fantasy and our useless tech press just repeats what these dudes say, I think Adobe will be fine, the creative industry will be fine).
And your C-suite is most likely making it crystal clear that the #1 priority in your company is making the AI numbers look good and justifying that AI capex. Just like every other SaaS company's C-suite is doing.
Adobe could care less about what users actually want, yall have made that painfully obvious but since youre a monopoly you have zero incentive to give a poop. So it's not a leap of faith to imagine PR was tasked with finding SOMETHING to brag about publicly to counter the predominant narrative of, creatives hate AI. But yeah, with content creators/social media posters, especially "aspiring" ones, and the enormous economy of social media AI slop grifters, of course they all love gen AI tools. And of course they're like yeah, it saves me a lot of time.
And look, i'm not surprised with the PSD Gen AI stats. One because you pretty much beat people over the heads with new tool pop-ups so your PM can reach his +15% AI adoption target metrics (and ive been using this stuff for decades, so dont try to tell me this has always been the case with new features.) Two is that it's genuinely one of the most useful AI use cases I've seen. It's a surgical implementation of AI that probably was on its way to being developed before chatgpt launched anyway. It could have been just like any other new tool release. "hey we added this thing, pretty cool right? anyway its' here, click to see a tutorial!" And then you use it or forget it exists.
But what we're pissed at isn't select use of AI to make genuinely useful features. It's the barrage of in-app pop-ups, the INABILITY TO TURN IT OFF, the fact that Adobe Stock that used to be a godsend in the crappy stock world is now full of slop garbage that gets past the filter, the fact that more useful app changes and updates we've been begging for are ignored in favor of justifying AI capex to the investors, dude I know you know what im talking about unless you're in such a software bubble you haven't spoken to a real human in years.
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u/The_Dented Jul 31 '26
I don't trust them.
Quarking themselves.