Craig Hale
Our Take: Adobe’s legal chief urges a pragmatic path for AI regulation – don’t tear up copyright law but clarify it and protect creators whose work fuels AI. I hate to say it, but I agree – let’s focus on the fundamentals, but importantly let’s also think about whether the means for enforcing individual contributors rights is accessible in this new world, and if not, whether there ought to be a supportive regime which regulates bad actors.
Your Takeaway: IP is always something to keep an eye on. The article talks about creator protections and provenance tools, and they are worth looking at and understanding; but it’s unclear how much control they truly give. Make sure you’re not cutting corners in your own IP compliance with third party materials at the same time as protecting your output.
While the world establishes copyright for AI-generated assets, Adobe’s legal chief calls for greater creator protection and asset verification.
Highlights
The difficulty at the moment is that regions like the US, EU and UK are pushing their own goals. "It’s a fallacy to think there would be a universal standard that would apply globally," Pentland said. "but we can dream."
When asked about watermarking, Pentland rejected visible marks as the default solution, favoring options like metadata or QR-style verification to preserve the integrity of an artist’s work.
To date, the ‘Big Five’ camera makers (Fujifilm, Sony, Canon, Nikon and Leica) and some Android manufacturers (Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy) have implemented Content Credentials, as have a number of popular platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, Meta and TikTok.
Adobe sees this type of verification protecting consumers against threats like deepfakes, enabling users to verify authenticity.
For Adobe, this means pushing Content Credentials, which the company describes separately as "a durable, industry-standard metadata type that acts like a digital nutrition label for content," in a bid to create verifiable content trails.
In 2025, the US Copyright Office granted protection to an image that was created with AI assistance, making this the first time anyone has ever been granted copyright protection for AI-generated work.
"We don’t want it to stifle innovation," she said, "but at the same time, we can’t leave it completely unchecked."
At the same time, Pentland also advocated for tech companies to get involved – not to redefine copyright law, but to maintain authenticity and protect creators in this era of AI assistance.
Speaking with *TechRadar Pro* in an exclusive interview at Adobe Summit 2026, the company’s Chief Legal Officer, Louise Pentland, urged policymakers to resist radical changes, and for courts and companies instead to focus on a more pragmatic approach.