That's not how it works. A company can not just claim things (as part of PR reaction or otherwise) and have it mean nothing legally, just because it isn't part of their ToS.
> A company can no just claim things and have it mean nothing legally
They can because that statement isn't binding and it's very interpretable.
> Adobe does NOT train any GenAI models on customer’s content
Today? Right as the tweet was being posted? That he knows of? They train non-GenAI models? Opinions are his own? He's not an authoritative source? It's not "customer content" if you gave them full rights on it?
We have evidence of tweets not counting much in a court, particularly if there are deep pockets behind them. So no, unless it's a legally binding document (and even then I have my doubts, deep pockets run deep) it's literally just words.
> They can because that statement isn't binding[...]
What do you mean? In the EU and the US, there is no law that allows you to say things, and then do other things, and be protected from having the difference mean something in court of law. A court can very well decide that what you provably said/wrote/claimed is legally pertinent, without it being part of any ToS.
Which I assume you understand, hence I am very confused about the confusion here.
If what you really mean is "nobody would care enough to take them to court", that's a different and somewhat ironic point, because if nobody takes legal action, it would not matter anyway where the violation occurs.
Any statement can be deemed legally binding by a court, which is the authority concerned with questions of legality. If you think in this specific case this would not apply, it is at least completely unclear, why.
They definitely can and they do, the only question is whether they will get caught or not. Folks at Volkswagen, Enron, Theranos, etc. probably thought they would never get caught.
They can not do it, and have it mean nothing legally, by their discretion, just because it's not part of their ToS, is my statement in spirit. Violation of ToS is not a requirement for violating the law.
So if they can't do it, how come they did? If push comes to shove what is worth more in court?
I mean you are correct in that public statements are not worth nothing, but Adobe customers would be incredibly naive if they took this as a guarantee that their data is safe with Adobe. In doubt their ToS are the real test. If they won't use, or didn't plan to use their users data in such way: Why did they add that to their ToS? And if they now say they won't don't do that why keep it in their ToS and push people away for whom that is an issue?
Adobe could have been the trusty software publisher whoose products you rely on blindly, yet on many occasions they have shown that this trust is worth next to nothing to them. For once they could do a thing that build trust instead of acting like a drug dealer, but yeah. Monopolism.
Granted. However I didn't claim that them writing one thing in their ToS and another thing on twitter was a bulletproof legal strategy. I didn't even say it was a sound legal strategy. What I said is, that Adobe customers cannot trust them not to do it purely based on the fact that their ToS say one thing and some employee on twitter says something else. If anything that would leave their customers with some reasonable doubt until they clarify that ToS section.
that said, they are completely untrustworthy.