A Poisonous New Tool Is Helping Artists Fight Back Against Generative AI

In the old days, the biggest problem visual artists faced was the threat of art tracers. These tracers, as their name suggests, stole art by tracing over another artist’s work and then creating a new piece out of the existing art. But tracers have nothing on “AI Artists,” who actively steal art to “create” their own.

This is the plight of many digital artists, whose works are often used as the basis for “new” art produced by generators without their consent. These “AI Artists” are facing legal backlash, but shaming them simply isn’t enough when there are few legal protections in place to prevent them from stealing.

Meet the AI Art Prevention Tool: Nightshade

Luckily, some tech people are on the side of artists in this war waged against them by AI companies. Nightshade is a tool that many artists can use to safeguard their work by corrupting the outputs of various AI generators like Midjourney and DALL-E, among others. Nightshade is no longer just a poisonous shrub, but a defense against AI theft. It works by obscuring pixels of an image, and this confuses the AI generator. The AI generator won’t be able to accurately produce an image that was requested because Nightshade “poisons” the images by making the generator misinterpret the prompt. Ask for Barbie on skates, and you might get Ken on a skateboard instead.

Glaze Over Your Art With Glaze, an Anti-Generative AI Tool

Nightshade isn’t the only option: Artists can also go online and use Glaze. This tool is designed to protect the art style of the artist along with their art. Art styles by distinct artists are something that is often mimicked by many AI art generators. It’s not just the art that’s in danger, but also the artists themselves, since many Generative AI attempt to copy the way they create art. But with Glaze, this becomes difficult to do because it’s designed to disrupt Generative AI’s view of the image it was fed.

The future of art is not dead, and there are people in tech who stand for the human rights of artists.

(featured image: Solar Sands/YouTube)