Graphic courtesy of DownloadAstro.com.

Blog Post Outlines Steps Artists Can Take to Protect Works from AI Rendering Apps

A blog on the website DownloadAstro.com explains how artists can protect their work from having AI engines trained on it and repurposing it for public use. DownloadAstro describes itself as “one of the web’s top sites for users who are looking for software for their desktops or mobile devices.” Its blog gives insights and tips for users.

With the headline, “Art VS AI: Artists, Defend and Protect Your Artwork,” the post outlines several steps artists can take to avoid having AI engines scrape their work and use it in creating nearly identical examples of what users request.

The blog explains how scraping works–appropriating art that’s posted online, often for sale–and creates an enormous dataset of artist styles that it draws from. A lot of established artists are complaining that nearly identical copies of their work are being used for generating AI art, but they aren’t being compensated. Here’s a very brief synopsis of suggestions:

  1. Opt out of AI Training: “Artists teamed up to establish Spawning Inc, to prevent using artwork and corresponding digital identifiers without consent.”
  2. Publish your Art on a Platform that Offers Protection Against AI: “The only software that currently allows users to share their works of art and protects uploaded artworks from AI infiltration is DeviantArt.”
  3. Block Bots from Crawling Pages on your Site: “This method is only applicable if you own the site that hosts your artwork. To prevent image databases from scraping images from your site in the first place, include a robots.txt file in the root of your website domain.”
  4. Mis-tag your Art: “Most artists tag works with words accurately describing them, making it easier for AI to copy those works. So what if you label your artwork with misleading tags?”
  5. Copyright Registration: All creative works are copyrighted as soon as they exist. …If you wish to take further measures to protect your artwork from AI, you can register it with the copyright registration office in your country at a price.
  6. “Glaze” Your Artwork: “Developed by professors and Ph.D. students of Computer Science at the University of Chicago and professional artists, Glaze combats AI mimicry by cloaking artworks. Cloaking is the process of changing stylistic elements of artists’ creations. These changes are subtle and barely affect the artwork.”

read more at en.downloadastro.com