Artists and writers have launched several lawsuits against AI companies, arguing that their work has been scraped into databases for training AI models without consent or compensation. Tech companies have responded that anything on the public internet falls under fair use. But it will be years until we have a legal resolution to the problem.
Unfortunately, there is little you can do if your work has been scraped into a data set and used in a model that is already out there. You can, however, take steps to prevent your work from being used in the future.
Here are four ways to do that.
Mask your style
One of the most popular ways artists are fighting back against AI scraping is by applying “masks” on their images, which protect their personal style from being copied.
Tools such as Mist, Anti-DreamBooth, and Glaze add tiny changes to an image’s pixels that are invisible to the human eye, so that if and when images are scraped, machine-learning models cannot decipher them properly. You’ll need some coding skills to run Mist and Anti-DreamBooth, but Glaze, developed by researchers at the University of Chicago, is more straightforward to apply. The tool is free and available to download as an app, or the protection can be applied online. Unsurprisingly, it is the most popular tool and has been downloaded millions of times.
But defenses like these are never foolproof, and what works today might not work tomorrow. In computer security, breaking defenses is standard practice among researchers, as this helps people find weaknesses and make systems safer. Using these tools is a calculated risk: Once something is uploaded online, you lose control of it and can’t retroactively add protections to images.
Rethink where and how you share
Popular art profile sites such as DeviantArt and Flickr have become gold mines for AI companies searching for training data. And when you share images on platforms such as Instagram, its parent company, Meta, can use your data to build its models in perpetuity if you’ve shared it publicly. (See opt-outs below.)
One way to prevent scraping is by not sharing images online publicly, or by making your social media profiles private. But for many creatives that is simply not an option; sharing work online is a crucial way to attract clients.