News Glaze 1.0 Modifies Art to Block AI-Generated Imitations

[Admin]

The tool shifts pixels around to prevent artwork from being used as training data.

Glaze 1.0 Modifies Art to Block AI-Generated Imitations : Read more

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

I'm not confident whether creating a "cloaked" version of the original image is going to be foolproof for 'AI mimicry'.

Although the cloaked artwork would appear identical and original to humans, but few changes made to certain artworks that have flat/dull/plain colours and smooth backgrounds, such as animation styles, are much more visible.

Human face pictures/photos have few distinct features, but art is much more complex, with an artistic style defined by numerous things, including brushstrokes, colour palettes, light and shadow as well as texture and positioning.

So in order to confuse AI tools and make sure they would not be able to read the artistic style and/or replicate it, we need to first isolate which parts of a piece of art were being highlighted as the key style indicators by AI art tools. I guess using a “fight fire with fire” approach is what these researchers are doing.

 

[bit_user]

Heh, of course the samples are on rather impressionistic artwork. Try one of these and I'll bet the protected version will look like garbage:

Realism (arts) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Even for impressionistic style, I still think the zoomed version looks pretty bad.

Ultimately, it won't be much more than a bump in the road, for AI image generators. Either they'll devise a filter to detect and try to undo the distortion, or they'll just skip the small percentage of artwork using it. It won't make much difference, in the end.

In my opinion, this is either a well-intentioned but ultimately rather futile effort, or maybe even an exploitative cash-grab. What it's not is a meaningful counterattack.

 

[bit_user]

Although the cloaked artwork would appear identical and original to humans,

No, they're quite visible. You need to click the zoom button and see at least a 1024x1024 version of the images. If you do, I'm sure you'll easily see the effect.

Human face pictures/photos have few distinct features, but art is much more complex, with an artistic style defined by numerous things, including brushstrokes, colour palettes, light and shadow as well as texture and positioning.

This is a good point. A lot of these cues can be gleaned from even the "protected" images.

 

[cryoburner]

This seems like snake oil. I highly doubt it would be effective. Even if it managed to somehow confuse today's AI training algorithms, tomorrow's might be able to see through it easily, at which point all the images you posted online using it will be unprotected. So you will have been going out of your way to present reduced-quality versions of your art that look worse without any real gain. And if you have already ever posted any of your works online, those images detailing your style are already out there, with numerous copies stored across the Internet, and have probably already been used for training AI.

And really, an artist's threat from AI is less that someone will copy their exact style, but rather simply that anyone being able to produce a detailed image in a matter of seconds with a simple text prompt means that the demand for original works that one spent days or weeks creating will be diminished. That cat is already out of the bag, and attempts to hide a small portion of images from AI is not going to change it. And this doesn't just go for images, but also for written works, music, and eventually most other creative and communicative endeavors, especially those that don't require complex interactions with the physical world to produce, where AI will have a massive speed advantage.

 

[InvalidError]

This seems like snake oil.

I wouldn't go that far. If the goal is to stop AI from mimicking an artist's original style, this will work in teaching AIs the AI-modified style instead of the original art as long as the artist doesn't publish the unmodified original style.

In other words, to protect your original style, you basically cannot publish it anywhere and as far as everyone else knows, your style is the AI-modified stuff.

 

[setx]

No, they're quite visible. You need to click the zoom button and see at least a 1024x1024 version of the images. If you do, I'm sure you'll easily see the effect.

I didn't even need to zoom in – in-article images are enough to see the ugly distortion. It looks like... something AI-generated? lol

Who really wants to protect their style better not show the images to anyone else.

 

[cryoburner]

I wouldn't go that far. If the goal is to stop AI from mimicking an artist's original style, this will work in teaching AIs the AI-modified style instead of the original art as long as the artist doesn't publish the unmodified original style.

In other words, to protect your original style, you basically cannot publish it anywhere and as far as everyone else knows, your style is the AI-modified stuff.

Except realistically, pretty much everyone who might use this has uploaded lots of their art already, and AI has probably already trained on it, or will train on cached copies in the future. And if the artists were to never post their original style anywhere, and only posted the distorted style, then what difference would it make if the AI copied their distorted style? The stuff they are posting wouldn't be any better. And if they make undistorted copies of their art available anywhere, it will likely get uploaded by someone else.

The modified works also look kind of bad up close, a bit like they're coated in wet wrinkled saran wrap. If an artist is already at a disadvantage competing against AI, it's probably not going to be to their advantage to pass their art through a filter that makes it look worse. They might as well just compress it as a 50% quality Jpeg and call it a day. And if disfiguring one's artwork like this became common, it probably wouldn't be hard for the AI to recognize and filter it out.

And once more, even if it were to stop AI from cloning a person's style, it's not likely to make their art any more valuable, and they will still be competing against technology that can produce detailed artworks in almost no time and at virtually zero cost. And if you have a popular style, other people are bound to produce similar works, and the AI will just train off them instead.

 

[IamNotChatGpt]

Solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

 

[InvalidError]

Solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

The problem of AI copying artists' style does exist. The "solution" of only publishing AI-modified artwork on the other hand is questionable since the "protection" goes away the instant the unmodified originals are made public and you are only known for your anti-AI-altered style until then, which kind of defeats the point.

 

[IamNotChatGpt]

The problem of AI copying artists' style does exist. The "solution" of only publishing AI-modified artwork on the other hand is questionable since the "protection" goes away the instant the unmodified originals are made public and you are only known for your anti-AI-altered style until then, which kind of defeats the point.

There is no problem since copying other Artists' style is absolutely normal. This is how we learn literally anything from day 0.

If you post something public, then you must expect web crawling.

This becomes very different, the moment we talk about closed spaces. For example training off of private coding repositories, closed artist spheres, pirated media etc.

 

[bit_user]

There is no problem since copying other Artists' style is absolutely normal. This is how we learn literally anything from day 0.

I basically agree with you. People are treating AI as a special case, but the way it learns isn't that different from how humans do.

However, the best counter-argument I can see is that an artist can try to devise an original style after seeing many examples of other styles. The kinds of AI image generators we've seen thus far only seem designed to copy a style they've seen (or some mix, thereof).

Of course, that doesn't preclude future AI image generators from being designed with more capacity for originality. In fact, it seems like a natural evolution for the technology.

 

[cryoburner]

There is no problem since copying other Artists' style is absolutely normal. This is how we learn literally anything from day 0.

A big difference here is that an artist borrowing from another's style needs to spend a lot of time and effort practicing their art, and is under similar restrictions as the original artist in terms of the time it takes to produce a piece of art. So the original artist is less likely to get overshadowed by those borrowing from them, and should still be able to make a decent living off their abilities.

With AI, that's completely different. Once an artist's works have been run through an AI algorithm, anyone can use that AI to clone the artist's style with almost zero time or effort put in on their part. The user can easily have the AI churn out thousands of images copying the artist's style in less time than it takes the artist to produce a single original artwork. Then those users can potentially turn around and sell their services based on the works of artists, and the original artists will have a very hard time competing with them.

If a company can replace most of their artists with a couple guys working for near-minimum wage, many probably will. And even anyone hoping to make a living generating AI images will likely discover that they are easily replaced by someone getting paid next to nothing overseas. The same will go for musicians, writers, and so on. Companies will use AI to cut costs involved with churning out content for consumers, and there will be a lot of skilled artists having a hard time finding work as a result.