Dear people of mastodon,
Does anyone know how I can protect my digital art from being stolen by ai? I've heard about things called Glaze or Nightshade but I have no idea how to use them or what they actually do. Any advice?
@BlackGlitterXx I haven't used them myself, but from domain knowledge:
1) How you use them: You use them like a regular filter or image processor. Most of the time they take an unprocessed image in and you get an obfuscated image out.
2) What they do: They subtly alter the pixel data of the image to break the patterns that AIs look for while training. In most cases, you can't visually tell the difference because the alteration is so subtle, but it causes current-gen AIs to absolutely choke when they try to generate an image mirroring the style that was obfuscated.
Note: while these tools do show significant results at this time, future AIs probably won't fall for their tricks and there are already ways to de-obfuscate them (but they're usually pretty lossy, so they're not super viable yet).
Note 2: Only images that are run through the processor are protected. If you post one obfuscated one to one site and one non-obfuscated one to another site, the AI will still likely be able to train off the latter.
