It annoys me how this seems like it's trying to force users to use Adobe Express rather than encourage them. Speaking frankly, it's pretty disgusting, just as disgusting at how much Adobe is trying to push Ai generated images to replace humans in the workspace. Also, why 3? Why not 10, or 20? This silent and arbitrary change absolute will effect hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of users who regular rely on free adobe stock images.
All the more reason why it's really messed up there was no major announcement on this, and Adobe should own up to this.