A team at the University of Chicago just released a tool called Nightshade that makes invisible changes to digital images. The selling point is that these changes “poison” AI models that try to use the images as training data.
@grammargirl I had to laugh at this "some web users have complained about it, suggesting it is tantamount to a cyberattack on AI models and companies."
My heart bleeds for the poor helpless AI companies unable to commit intellectual property theft. 🎻
@grammargirl AI companies are trying to argue this should be illegal, so here is my take on it.
(Assume I'm an artist who uses nightshade for this)
I made this art and I protect it with nightshade
You want to take it to train your AI
You don't /have/ to take my art so you choosing to take my art puts you at fault. My attempt to protect my art is personal and not targeted at you personally so the fact you are solely impacted by this means that you are the one who wants to steal my art and, as such, should deal with the consequences of that.
If you put DRM on your works then I should be allowed to put nightshade in my works.
@littletranspunk I'm no lawyer, but that's what seems logical to me.
The distinction I saw when it first came out was that it could only be illegal if people intentionally uploaded their shaded images to an AI. If the companies suck them up on their own without permission, it's fine.
But maybe the distinction has been lost as the debate has gone on.
@grammargirl My guess that even without this kind of technology, AI generated images would already be toxic pollution for makers of new images, so it isn't safe for them to continue to browse the net and scoop up everything. That is because people post the bad ones (they are often funny) so if those get sucked in along with their descriptions, they will just train the new models to create extra limbs and fingers. And even the good ones are often in the uncanny valley. So my guess is that they will just go with the images they have already collected together with new stuff they know the provenance of, and Nightshade won't matter.
@chris I've gone back and forth and back and forth and I can't see any differences. I'm sure they're there, and I'm sure real artists would care, but to my untrained eye, they look the same.
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