How to Protect Your Art from AI Training: Artist's Guide 2024
Image Credit: Digimarc Corporation
Welcome to the Matrix! Did you know by 2026 90% of online content will be AI generated? That’s a lot! And it’s freaking out the art world! As an artist you’ve put your heart and soul into your work, and protecting art from AI training has become more crucial than ever.
We are invested in both art and technology fields and will try to give you basic guidelines to guide you through essential digital art protection techniques and pattern design security measures to keep your creations safe from becoming just another data point in an AI’s training set.
Let’s dive into the world of digital art protection and come out the other side with a toolbox full of ways to keep your art safe!
Table of Contents
What is AI Training and How it Affects Artists
First of all, we want to make it clear the type of AI we’re talking about here.
If you did not realize before, we all, every one of us, has been working AI for years. This is what we call ‘the Algorithm’.
All computer systems run on an ‘algorithm’ to process and provide information. The search about the restaurant on Google Maps, or how to bake a chocolate cake on an internet browser are all results of the running algorithm behind.
The type of AI we would focus on in this post is, self-learning, self-developing GenerativeAI(GenAI) from now on and how it affects us as artists.
We’ve been working with GenAI for the last 2-3 years professionally and it’s been a wild ride. You know how we pour our hearts and souls into every brush stroke or surface pattern design?
Well, it turns out all that hard work might be feeding into something we never signed up for: AI model training.
So, what’s the deal with AI training? Basically these fancy computer programs are gobbling up tons of images from the internet to learn how to create art. And guess what? Some of our work might be in those AI art datasets without us even knowing it.
We remember when we first heard about this. It was like, “Wait, what? Our art is being used to train robots to paint?” It felt like someone was sitting behind us in the studio, copying our every move. Not cool, right?
The whole thing raises some big questions about artist’s rights in the digital age. I mean we’re all for technology and innovation but where do we draw the line?
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the ethics of AI generated art. Some people say it’s just another tool like Photoshop or digital tablets. But as an expert I can say that, we’re not so sure. When an AI can produce a piece in seconds that might have taken us days or weeks it kinda makes you wonder about the value of human creativity, you know?
And don’t even get us started on the lawsuits! We’ve been following some of these cases and it’s like watching a tennis match. Artists are fighting tooth and nail to protect their work and tech companies are saying it’s all fair use. It’s enough to make your head spin!
But here’s the thing – knowledge is power, right? By understanding how ai model training works and the risks involved we can start to protect our work better. It’s like locking up your studio at night; you gotta take steps to keep your art safe in the digital world too.
We’ve learned being proactive is key. Whether it’s watermarking our images, being careful where we share our work online or joining forces with other artists to advocate for stronger protections there are things we can do to protect our work.
Copyright Protection and Opting Out
Okay, let’s get into the nitty gritty of protecting our art in this crazy AI world. We’ve been doing our research on copyright for AI generated art and let me tell you it’s a mess!
First off, copyright protection is our armor in this digital battlefield. It’s not perfect but it’s a start. Better than not having it.
However, we’ve learned that slapping that little © symbol on our work isn’t enough anymore. We gotta be proactive about it.
Now here’s where it gets tricky. Opting out of AI training datasets is a thing and it’s something we should all do. But man, is it a pain in the you-know-what! It’s like trying to find a specific grain of sand on a beach. We spent hours going through the process for some of our work and we’re still not sure we got it all covered.
They say they provide ways for us to opt out but let’s be real, it’s not exactly user friendly. And I know exactly how long we have to wait for them to process that request!
When it comes to AI training data ethics it’s a gray area. As mentioned I’ve been working with AI professionally and AI ethics has been and is still a topic we’re still trying to figure out as we go -honestly- sometimes just trying to keep up with the output of AI.
One thing we’ve learned is art licensing for AI use is a thing. It’s like renting out your art but to a robot. Weird right? We’re still figuring out if it’s worth it or if we should just keep our art to ourselves. You can read that article soon here too as soon as we finish our research for you.
As for digital art security measures we’ve had to step up our game. It’s not just about watermarks anymore. We’re talking encryption, metadata management – the whole nine yards. It’s a lot to learn but hey, nobody said being an artist in the 21st century would be easy!
At the end of the day we’re all in this together. We’re learning as we go, making mistakes and figuring out how to protect our creative babies in this wild new world. It’s a pain, yes, but our art is worth it, right?
Technical Tips for Protecting Digital Art
It’s about to get techy for a minute but bear with me 🙂 We’ve been testing out some cool ways to keep our digital art safe from those sneaky AI scrapers.
First up, invisible watermarking techniques. This method is called Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) watermarking which is widely used in digital image protection.
DWT watermarking works by embedding information in the frequency domain of an image. It’s much more robust than simple opacity based methods. Here’s how it works:
- The original image is decomposed into multiple frequency bands using DWT.
- A watermark (usually a binary image or code) is generated.
- The watermark is embedded into the mid frequency bands of the image. These bands are chosen because they provide a good balance between imperceptibility and robustness.
- The watermarked image is reconstructed using inverse DWT.
This is complex and requires specialized software or custom programming. It’s not something you can do with standard image editing tools like Photoshop.
The advantages of DWT watermarking:
- High imperceptibility: The watermark is almost invisible to the human eye.
- Robustness: It can withstand image processing operations like compression, cropping and filtering.
- Security: The watermark is hard to remove without degrading the image quality.
But it requires technical knowledge in signal processing and programming. It’s used in professional settings where high level security for digital assets is required.
The same technology is basically embedded into Google’s and OpenAI artificial intelligence systems in order to identify the AI generated images. For artists looking to use these advanced techniques it’s generally recommended to use professional watermarking services or software that implements these methods rather than trying to code them from scratch.
If you’re an artist or surface pattern designer and still here, let me know if you’d like to hear more about the DWT services 🙂
Ready to move on?
Blocking AI Crawlers and Bots
Let’s get into protecting our art from those AI crawlers and bots and start with metadata manipulation techniques.
AI crawlers look for these metadata fields:
- EXIF data (Exchangeable Image File Format):
- Camera make and model
- Date and time the photo was taken
- GPS coordinates (if available)
- IPTC data (International Press Telecommunications Council):
- Title
- Description/Caption
- Keywords/Tags
- Copyright information
- Creator/Author name
- XMP data (Extensible Metadata Platform):
- Similar to IPTC but in a more flexible format
Now here’s the tricky part. Altering or removing these fields can help protect our art from AI but it can affect SEO in the following ways:
- Image search: Search engines use metadata to index images. By removing this info we might see a decrease in image search visibility.
- Context: Metadata helps search engines understand the context of our images which can affect how they’re ranked in search.
- Copyright protection: Ironically removing copyright info from metadata might make it harder to prove ownership if our work is used without permission.
- User experience: Some metadata (like alt text) is important for accessibility which is a SEO factor.
We found that a good compromise is:
- Keep essential SEO metadata (like alt text and file names)
- Remove or alter fields that aren’t important for SEO but might be used by AI (like camera info)
- Use custom fields or encrypted metadata that search engines can read but AI crawlers can’t
It’s not perfect but it helps us balance protection and visibility. We’re always adjusting as we learn more. It’s like a never ending game of digital chess!
Now let’s talk about some AI-resistant art platforms
One other thing that’s been super helpful is using a robots.txt file on our website.
First off no platform is 100% AI-resistant. The technology is always advancing and what’s resistant today might not be tomorrow. That said there are some platforms that are making an effort to protect artists’ work from AI scraping:
- DeviantArt: They’ve introduced DreamUp which allows artists to choose if their work can be used for AI training. They also have a feature called DeviantArt Protect which scans for copies of your work across the web.
- ArtStation: They’ve implemented an AI art detection system and allow artists to opt out of AI training datasets.
- Behance: Adobe’s platform has options for artists to flag their work as not available for AI training.
We’ve tried a few of these ourselves and while they’re not perfect they do offer more protection than most traditional platforms. We upload some work to Behance and were surprised by the control we had over our art.
But we’ve also learned that true protection comes from a combination of platform features and our own awareness. We still watermark our work, use metadata manipulation techniques and carefully consider where and how we share our art online.
We should mention this field is rapidly changing. New platforms are popping up and existing ones are updating their policies and technology. We make it a habit to check for updates and new features on the platforms we use.
How to opt-out of Data Scraping of Meta AI on Instagram?
Yes, as creatives we all need social media to reach to a wider audience, find new clients, connect with like-minded artists.
As all other artists, we also use mostly Instagram and Facebook to share our art.
Even though it’s not an simple toggle on/off button(I wonder why?), it could be still possible to opt-out your data to be used as AI training data on Instagram. Here’s how you can do it:
- Go to Settings -> About Page
- Click on ‘Privacy Policy’
- Click on ‘right to object’ link in the text
- Fill our the form to opt-out. You should use the email address that’s associated with your Instagram account.
If Meta finds your objection rightful, then your data on Instagram won’t be used for data scraping to train Meta AI.
It’s like putting up a “No Trespassing” sign for bots. We were skeptical at first thinking “Do these AI crawlers even follow rules?” But it turns out some of them do! We were surprised to find out that big names like ChatGPT and Common Crawl actually respect these files. It’s not a silver bullet but every little bit helps right?
We’ve also been playing around with WordPress plugins. Kudurru has been a lifesaver. It’s like having a bouncer for our website keeping those unwanted AI guests out. We’ve had fun adding IP addresses to our ban list. It’s a bit like playing whack-a-mole sometimes but it’s oddly satisfying.
But here’s the thing – we’ve realized protecting our art isn’t just about technical solutions. It’s also about being smart about how and where we share our work. We’re more selective now, choosing platforms and communities that value artist rights and take steps to protect our work.
Advanced Methods
Let’s talk about cloaking images with Glaze and Nightshade. These are like digital invisibility cloaks for our art! Next Monday you can read more in detail about these two softwares, how to use it and detailed information.
Glaze is this cool program developed by some clever folks at the University of Chicago. We tried it out and it’s pretty cool. It uses some fancy algorithms to tweak our art in ways that are barely noticeable to us humans but throw AI for a loop. It’s like giving our art a secret handshake that only we know.
Then there’s Nightshade. This one’s a real trickster! It sends false positives to AI models. Imagine an AI looking at your beautiful landscape painting and thinking it’s seeing a toaster.
These methods for protecting art are game changers but they’re not set it and forget it solutions. We’ve learned artists should regularly check how their protected work is being interpreted online. It’s like being your own art detective!
We’ve been trying these out on our own art. If you want to know more about how to use Glaze and Nightshade for your art let us know! We can put together a step by step guide for you.
One thing to note though, these methods aren’t perfect. AI technology is always evolving so what works today may not work tomorrow. We make it a habit to stay up to date on the latest protection methods. It’s like a never ending game of digital cat-and-mouse!
But here’s the thing – using these tools has given us a sense of control we didn’t have before. It feels good to know we’re taking action to protect our work. Sure it’s extra effort but our art is worth it right?
We’ve also found that combining these advanced methods with basic protection methods work best. It’s like layering up for cold weather – the more layers the better!
How to Train AI Models Responsibly
Well there are many standalone companies, departments of hundreds of people in big enterprises who are busy with this question. It’d be unfair for us to answer all the questions around this topic. However governance and new processes are one of the most important aspects of the issue.
The most obvious problem with Chat GPT, Gemini and other open source AI systems is their lack of transparency and fairness in their data collection and usage. So instead of just complaining about AI and how it’s going to destroy the art world we, artists, should consider the impact of AI model training on our rights and the art world and work with AI companies to establish guidelines and best practices for responsible AI and familiarize ourselves with copyright laws and their limitations in protecting original art against AI systems.
Conclusion
There’s no one magic solution to this problem. We’ve learned it takes a whole toolbox of methods to keep our creations safe in this digital wild west. From good old copyright protection to fancy new tech like invisible watermarks we’re using every trick in the book – and writing some new ones too!
Protecting your art from AI training requires a multi layered approach – copyright protection, watermarks and digital signatures, blocking AI crawlers and bots and advanced methods.
But here’s the thing – this isn’t a “set it and forget it” situation. The AI world is moving faster than a caffeinated cheetah and we have to stay on our toes. What works today may be old news tomorrow. That’s why staying informed is so important. We can’t afford to get complacent.
Artists should stay informed and adapt to new threats to protect their work from AI training datasets.
Working with AI companies? That’s a tricky dance. It feels a bit like trying to befriend the school bully sometimes. But we’re realizing that if we want to have a say in how our art is used we need to be at the table. It’s about finding that sweet spot between embracing innovation and protecting our rights so by prioritizing transparency and fairness artists can work with AI companies to establish guidelines and best practices for responsible AI model training.
At the end of the day protecting our art from AI training isn’t just about our individual pieces. It’s about protecting the whole concept of human creativity. It’s about making sure when someone looks at a piece of art they’re connecting with a real human experience not just a clever algorithm. Protecting your art from AI training is essential for artists to protect their rights and prevent unauthorized use.
We have to admit sometimes it feels like we’re trying to hold back the tide with a bucket. But you know what? Every little bit helps. Every artist who takes action to protect their work, every conversation we have about ethics in AI – it all adds up.
So let’s keep creating, keep protecting and keep pushing for a future where AI and human artists can coexist without tripping over each other. It’s a big ask but hey we’re artists – we’re used to challenging the norm right?
Remember – our creativity, our passion, our individuality – that’s something no AI can copy. Let’s keep that fire burning!
