Another question is perpetual storage of our content. Is it legal at all? It could generate a lot of legal problems both for us and Envato. We have our authorship and if someone decides to remove all his/her portfolio at any time, any third party services invisibly involved in this grey deal will be affected by new places, where author would decide to sell their works. Very grey and controversial texting of the new agreement, a lot of hidden details. Why Envato decide for what amount of money they will feed generative AI networks? Who decided this price? How much of this paid money will be paid to author? Doesot count potential loss of income? How it’s possible to use our content without informing us about this deals? This is OUR product, selling on your platform. From one hand, Envato optimized their taxes by proclaiming “We are just a market”, from other hand - market CAN’T grab all your goods and sell it without your agreement to third world country factory, that makes replica of your products. Right? A lot of questions, but what most disrespectful to all of us is a time left to us for making this decision, lack of explanations. Accept it or go away. You have 20 days. It’s especially strange in light of upcoming discussions to stop AI training for 6 month.
I have no idea. I’m just an author like the rest of you. All I know is what was in the email.
Good bye, this is unacceptable! But hey, the goal of the elites are: You will own nothing and we will be happy.
That’s what all the text-to-image AI machines are already doing, and people are already reselling stuff to other platforms!
I have no clue how this thing is going to work, but I can imagine something like Midjourney implemented into Envato, and authors get paid a few cents anytime the AI machine uses their items to generate an asset.
Envato be like “Imagine if Greg Rutkowski got 1$ anytime his name got promped in the last 12 months!” 
A whole new level of exploitation.
One more thing from this letter: “Without having details of future arrangements, we cannot provide you with details of the fee payable to you, the Author.” Let me rephrase this. You agree that we will sign such deal at any cost and DO NOT guarantee what fee will be paid to you (if any). But you must agree. I think fair solution is to include options to our agreement, whether you want or not to participate in such programs, while continuing to sell on both platforms. That’s easy. It takes time to make code for this, bit it’s fair and shows respect to those who participated in Envato success.
I left Envato (CodeCanyon back in the days) almost 10 years ago. I still have special feelings about it: CodeCanyon is the place where I made my first money online and what enabled me to go fulltime digital nomad. I made over 100k in sales though Envato did get a nice portion out of that.
I left Envato when they moved to the US. At the time they just started adding stuff (like W8-BEN and EU taxes). I don’t care about this extra-stuff. I am not based in the US or the EU. I’m an independent seller and from my perspective these are things the buyers in the respective countries should handle themselves.
Needless to say, it’s gone downhill for authors from there. I can’t imagine doing something like identity verification today. It was much simpler and easier back in the day: You build something, you sell it, you withdraw your earnings. All these corporate bullshit doesn’t apply for people making $1000/month. That’s not even the minimum wage in most of the EU.
Anyway, the point being is, leaving Envato was a very difficult decision. Because the amount of money involved and because of the fact that I got most of freelance clients through the platform itself. I bit the bullet and moved on. Guess what? It was the best decision I made in my life. The decision was scary at first because I didn’t have an alternative income stream but life finds a way and the grass IS greener.
If things are going downhill (anywhere, a country, a company, relation, etc…) then it’s time to move. For Envato, this was 10 years ago.
Got it! Thank you!))
Hey everyone! We realize that with any change there is going to be uncertainty and doubts. Just want to let everyone know that we will be getting answers to your questions where we can when the Australia office comes back online.
Keep the questions coming and know that we couldn’t do this without you and author success is very important to us.
if AI training companies want to use our music, for example… no one will know about it … they can easily do it by scanning the Internet, and no one will ever say that this music is a variation on the theme of track_1+ track_2 * track_3= …
Therefore, we are in any case powerless before it. We need to relax and get at least some income… or get out of here.
Imagine that you want to know from which photos AI Migjornei draws its variations from… do you think you can find the authors, based on which work the AI makes a photo?!
my questions is
- if i sell my creative assets to other platforms what if envato is selling my same content on it ?
- if they are training the AI what is the benefit authors will be getting ?
- how transparent you will make this process like our content is used by this 3rd party platform specially which content is used ?
- reveal all the 3rd party platforms that you will be using our content ?
Right now the download system and earnings are shady. we dont even get how many views our items getting on elements and downloads. so how we can track piracy or misuse of our assets.
its the end of hardworking creative professionals its better to start freelancing atleast we have a loyal client base and if all of us start focusing on that area there will be shortage of good content of these platforms then these companies will understand our true value.
its really bad to see how this world values creative professionals.
Hi there!
Who else received that recent Envato email about new updates to the Author terms?
I suggest you to take a good read and pay attention to this highlighted text:
• Developing generative Al models that use your content.
For the customer, it will be stockaudio tracks that are individual and cheap. For the creator, it will be fewer sales/fewer income as the AI just uses individual elements from a huge database of author content.
How do you see the upcoming AI developments?Just a bubble?
Stockaudio isn’t all that “creative” right? But what about all those authors who are empowered to work on actual creative projects by selling their generic sounding scraps and outtakes?
I feel this needs to be adressed. Either go with AI or not. Simply opting out your tracks will just be economic suicide.
When did you get the email? I can’t see any email on my account.
Edit: Just got it…
Mine came in about 8 a.m. Eastern time.
Artificial intelligence uses the world around it to learn, and it does so very quickly and every day without your knowledge or permission.
Example 1. → everything you type in google (on any google branch like search engine, translator, drive, messengers, etc.) is used for learning (behaviour, language, writing style, reactions to problems, defining problems and questions, work, etc. )
Example 2. → Artificial intelligence learns your body - all you need is a camera connected to the Internet (so-called cctv, any wifi cameras in homes, phones, etc.) to which AI has access - your faces (mimics), movements are analyzed on this basis body, movement style - behavior.
Example 3. → AI listens to you at every opportunity - I’m not even talking about Alexa, google assistant, cortana others with whom you interact (conversation) voluntarily - I’m also talking about the fact that your own phones, TV sets and any device with with an microphone connected to the Internet → you can test it yourself - namely → put your phone somewhere close and talk to yourself about something - for example that you want to buy new tires for your car - after some time you will start getting ads on FB, TT, Instagram etc. on the subject - only based on what the phone overheard.
Example 4. → Smartwatch connected to the internet - your pulse, blood data, performance, number of steps… it’s all accumulated and analyzed by AI.
PS. very soon you won’t even be able to lie to an official (not to mention the police) because he will have AI support (a camera aimed at you) that will be able to detect the smallest lie from uncontrollable and undetectable to the human eye involuntary facial movements lasting hundredths of a second.
The same is happening in the world of music, video, graphics, photos, etc. here also without your consent, each of your videos, music, graphics are analyzed and are a learning material for AI → I emphasize → without your knowledge and consent.
What Envato wants to do is not their abstract idea but a necessity. Most large supermarkets do the same - it is a forced step.
Now the question is do I like it?
No - I don’t like it at all.
Yes, I am fascinated by AI, but at the same time (and paradoxically) I don’t like the fact that AI performs the work of copywriters, graphic designers, illustrators … and now more and more boldly takes over the tasks of video editors and music creators.
This is not to my liking and to all the representatives of the creative professions mentioned above.
Nevertheless, I find some of the reactions here to be exaggerated - it’s something that would happen sooner or later - not to say that it has been going on for quite some time anyway.
→ You think midjourney learned his art from signed consent?
→ No - this tool learned everything from the internet, without permission from anyone.
Here, at least, we are talking about some consent and some potential profit for the authors.
We’ll see what the future brings.
Very good point with this.
Unfortunately, proving to artificial intelligence that it stole anything from someone will be almost impossible. Proving that she learned something will be very difficult, apart from the fact that learning is not illegal → it’s called inspiration - and every creator uses it.
Finally, I will also add a small fraction of the future → well, suing AI will be suicide - why? Because AI is able to learn the whole law of any country in one day (it already knows them) - and is able to apply them logically without any problem (I remind you that AI learned by itself to beat the world champions in any logical games within hours).
Humanity doesn’t stand a chance against AI.
The faster you understand it, the greater chances you have to prepare for coexistence with AI.
So the wisest choice is obviously keep developing it with no boundaries 
Something to cheer you up at the end. This is what GPT chat wrote to me:
While AI can generate designs and music based on certain parameters or data inputs, it cannot match the creativity and originality of human designers and musicians. Additionally, AI-generated designs and music may lack the emotional depth and cultural context that are often present in human-created works.
You shouldn’t run away from Envato, just try to outsmart the AI by creating designs that the machine can’t simulate. This is a difficult task, but I am convinced that it is feasible and very profitable in the future (although AI will eventually learn this too).
no - the wisest choice I mentioned is to prepare for coexistence with AI. Use it - do not fear it.
My main concerns/questions are:
Question n.1
What would be considered a fair amount for any dataset license? This is also an open question to other fellow composers.
Like I’m a cook and I’ll give you my own recipe for this dish that makes me earn thousand of dollars every month. Not only I give you my recipe but also the license to teach it to an AI that will replicate the dish until it gets better than the original one and it will also use it to make iterations that will better match the needs of every hungry person in the world until it make me and other cooks obsolete and it will do it at friggin exponential curve speed.
I’ll give it to you but at least I want to retire with a lot of money! 
So imo transparency is needed for such a big step.
Question n.2
Can Envato write an article or give us some trusted links/sources where we can understand how AI training works in every creative field?
For example, I would like to know if teaching AI using a music portfolio will lead to Content ID issues like false claims when a track is generated by the system.
WiIl AI take audio pieces and recombine them at audio-pieces-level or will it analyze them at an atomic/sample level and so will it be able to synthesize everything from scratch?
Will it convert audio to MIDI to get an archive of musical phrases that will then be associated with third party sample libraries, and so will it be acting like a human producer?
If some AI generated track will trigger Content ID or if some composition copyright issues arise because the generated musical phrase is too similar to one of the dataset and these issues will affect the future user of this track, who will be the one deemed responsible?
At that point we would have given the license to the third party to use our tracks to train the AI who generated the track that got issues to the paying subscriber to that third party AI site, so would we be deemed liable as written in the new terms?
Again, big changes and moves require more transparency and more information, not just to be sure we’re all rewarded in an adequate manner, but most importantly to be sure we’re not putting ourself in future trouble because we couldn’t see the bigger picture.