The situation you are describing is not morally the same. (edit: striking through this part ~~Adobe's desire for their customers' content is to use it to develop AI tools that Adobe can then resell to its customers.~~) The security checkup you are talking about is intended to combat a real problem that unsophisticated smartphone users are victim to.
Adobe's request to access your content is not based out of intending to safeguard unsophisticated users.
It is even very difficult to disable. It always gets back on after a while, unless you do some serious PowerShell magic.
https://medium.com/sensorfu/how-my-application-ran-away-and-...
So is your API key baked into the app? Implement a login screen or a field for the API key and then who cares if Google has a copy of your app, they can't access your data.
You need to have the app to get to know the URLs.
Implement auth, do extremely basic auth if you have to using http basic auth over https and check against a hardcoded value on the server, it's not secure by any stretch of the imagination but is better than giving "api keys" to any intermediary that can do a string dump on your APK...
Maybe it's because it has extensive permissions wich I need in order to get access to my data usage, but that's not the point. Then again, it also happens with apps which don't require many permissions.
When I upgraded it today to a new version, my Pixel phone told me that I have to upload the app to Google, so that they can security-check it. Previously there was an option where you could select something like "don't check".
It's somehow the same as with this Adobe issue. Google now has a copy of my app even though I just installed my app on my phone.
If now a Google employee installs the app on a device to "check" it, he will be able to see my power consumption, see who called, listen to voice messages, and so on.