Nightcafe vs Nightshade. Artists are fighting back against AI

[sm]

I've been following the development of Glaze. It is a tool that artists can use to cloak their artwork and protect it against AI scrapers. The developers are working on a new project call Nightshade that can potentially 'poison' AI models. The tool adds pixels that distorts the image and can't be seen by the naked eye. They can however be seen by the AI's eye and the more images that use this tool online, the more the AI image is distorted. Dogs become cats, Hats become Cakes and so on. When 300 poisoned images train the AI model, the result is a pixelated mess.  

This is another reason why AI companies need to seek permission from and/or fairly compensate artists to use their images because if they don't, aside from using the law, artists will fight back will tools like these, rendering their models useless and costing them time and money to retrain and to find and remove these 'poisoned' images. This will also be an open source project so there'll be more versions of it popping up in the future.

If you're an artist that's concerned about your images being scraped, this article by MIT Technology Review is an interesting read.  Glaze and Nightshade won't help any for existing work that has already been scraped by these AHs (oops typo, I mean AIs) but it may be something to consider for existing work.

[PAZP]

Thank you for sharing that article. Very interesting. 

[TabzJones]

Honestly, I think this is a great idea!  I am a traditional and digital artist. And I've been very vocal about my use of AI as well. I am also a very vocal about IP rights.

Anything that prevents the use of unauthorized artworks to train the AI is fine by me. I use closed model sets of my original artwork to train my own LoRA styles. I don't want to use anyone else's artwork or style. 

I see this as a good thing. The more rules that are put in place to make the use of AI tools legitimate practice, the better for all digital artists moving forward.

[sm]

Well said, Tabz. AI itself isn't the issue. It's the complete lack of disrespect to human works and the creation of it at their expense that's the issue. If it isn't ethically produced, it won't be sustainable.

[sm]

That should read "for new work" at the end

[chefcateringbiz]

This could actually result in some pretty amusing images, just sayin'.

[TabzJones]

Also, I would like to ad that Nightcafe has started blocking artists' names for prompting. It's an exhausting task, but they say that they're working through it. The best possible thing to do, is for artists to simply contact these companies and ask to be removed. I would start with stable.ai themselves first since they are the base for most of the other websites. Getty has already had success doing this. I'm sure that a simple C&D would be more effective than screaming over social media. 

[sm]

No, that is not good enough, Tabz. The onus should be on the AI companies to seek permission. Artists shouldn't be expected to go to every AI company and ask to opt out. They don't even know all of them and more keep popping up. 

Getty and Adobe are using  contributor images. Although they are seemingly going about it more ethically, they just did it without seeking permission. Many contributors are furious. They have paid some contributors an insulting bonus amount after the fact and from what I have read, there is no opting out of it. 

[sm]

Also blocking artists' names at the prompt still won't prevent similar works. They are blocking artists' names for their protection. They would also be blocking famous artists' names, not all. They are scraping the whole internet, they wouldn't know all artists' name. My work has been scraped and I'm peed off about it.