A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways.
The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission.
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Zhao’s team also developed Glaze, a tool that allows artists to “mask” their own personal style to prevent it from being scraped by AI companies. It works in a similar way to Nightshade: by changing the pixels of images in subtle ways that are invisible to the human eye but manipulate machine-learning models to interpret the image as something different from what it actually shows.
What a dumb solution to a problem that doesn’t need a solution. The problem isn’t AI, it’s the lack of understanding for the tech that has people thinking AI is theft.
Is it not theft? These “AI” are trained on other people’s work, often without their knowledge or permission.
This is why I think people don’t know what they are talking about.
You can look at a picture from an artist without it being considered theft, so are your memories and impressions theft? That’s what training data does, it teaches AI what something looks like, with many samples. It’s literally what your brain does, the way you see multiple dogs and know what a dog looks like is the same way that AI trains pattern recognition.
It’s completely reasonable and desirable to have AI consume all available images, regardless of copyright the way your eyes and brain can do the same. Training data isn’t theft no more than going to a museum and looking at art is theft.
This take that this is bad is completely unhinged and indicates people don’t understand AI.
I’d be careful with claiming who does and does not understand things.
First of all, a person can’t go to a museum, see a piece of art then go home and reproduce that art or style. Given enough time, sure they might be able to learn to replicate the style. Those that are particularly good at reproduction might even become forgers which is a crime.
Second, these llms aren’t AI. They can’t think in terms of how a living being can, only regurgitate information. They’re glorified search engines in a way.
Lastly, I can assume that you aren’t a creative person. You probably type in some prompt to an image generator and think “I made this”. It’s easier for someone like you to overlook issues because they don’t effect you because you lack depth, which I know is hard to accept. Maybe one day you’ll gain some insight into your own lack of understanding… But I doubt it.
I used to be a musician, I also used to paint. I think my thought processes are no more complex than most computers, and I genuinely don’t believe human creativity is special even a little bit, like consciousness, it’s a subjective illusion.
I do not believe in things like copyright, or intellectual property, or even ownership of these things, I think these things should be collectively owned by society.
I don’t disagree with you from lack of experience, I disagree from fundamentally different ideological underpinnings.
I believe there is nothing special about human perception and experience, and I can see the ways that technology maps near perfectly to the way we think. AI shouldn’t be limited, it should replace us.
Okie dokie, doc. If you think the human brain isn’t “special” then I don’t know what to tell you.
Also, you can’t know how we think when we as a species don’t know, but you being the smartest person in the room is clearly very important to you so I’ll leave you to it!