Adobe Bridge adds metadata to JPG as a sidecar XMP instead of writing it on the JPG file

Question

Using the latest Adobe Bridge 2024 (v.14.1.0) I have encountered an annoying bug recently. When I modify the metadata (such as tags, rating etc) of some JPEG files, instead of writing the changes on the JPEG file, it creates a sidecar XMP file, which is very annoying and may create problems when I transfer the file (upload to the cloud etc. or Flickr). It happens with some files (not with all of them) and I think the pattern I detected is that the files impacted are those recently edited with generative AI. Is there a way to solve this annoying bug?

Update: According to source 1, the issue is probably created by a conflict with Adobe Camera Raw 16.3.1. A user claims that manually downgrading to Adobe Camera Raw 16.0.0 solves the problem.

Related Links:

1. In Adobe Forums two users report exactly the same bug!
2. Google search
3. Adobe Bridge Bug Report
4. Question in Adobe Forum about using XMP with RAW files

Answer 1

Apperantly the bug was caused by the new Adobe Camera Raw v16.3.1, which conflicts with AI-generated content. A temporary solution is to manually downgrade to Adobe Camera Raw v16.0 from here: https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/kb/camera-raw-plug-in-installer.html in Adobe website. One needs to click the 14.5 link but change in the URL from 14x to 16x and from 14_5 to 16_0, and then restart the computer. It worked for me.

Update 2024-08-21:

Adobe are aware of this problem, see https://helpx.adobe.com/bridge/kb/xmp-file-jpeg.html . Their best suggestion so far is to downgrade Adobe Camera Raw to version 16.2. I hope Adobe Camera Raw next version will solve this issue.